10 Nastiest Scummiest Moments in Football History

<h4>10 Nastiest Scummiest Moments in Football History</h4>

Welcome to WatchMojoUK, and in this unranked list we’re looking at some of the most reprehensible moments in the history of football.

<h4>Kicking Mateta</h4>

The FA Cup was rocked by some unprecedented violence on the pitch in 2025, when Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts kicked Crystal Palace forward Jean-Philippe Mateta in the head. Violence in football FANS is a well-known phenomenon that all of the world’s football organisations are intent on cracking down on, but scenes like this between players on the pitch are a world away from the usual tackles we see. Mateta’s injuries were severe, with his ear needing cosmetic surgery and 25 stitches to be repaired after the damage Roberts did. Roberts has since received a three match ban, eventually increased to six matches, while Millwall supporters were chanting “let him die” from the stands during the incident.

<h4>The Ryan Giggs Scandal</h4>

In 2011, an anonymous footballer took out a super injunction to stop the tabloids reporting on his affair with a “Big Brother” contestant and beauty pageant star – but he wasn’t anonymous for long. It was an open secret that Ryan Giggs was the footballer in question, and he was eventually named after somebody leaked the details of the injunction on Twitter. Though a footballer cheating on his wife isn’t THAT big a news item, the real issue was these super injunctions themselves, and how easy it seemed to be for public figures to take them out and stop journalists from reporting on even the fact that such injunctions existed. It was MP John Hemming who used his parliamentary privilege to officially name Giggs.

<h4>2013 Match-Fixing Ring</h4>

In late 2013, newspaper investigations led to multiple arrests of people allegedly involved in match-fixing in football. The ringleader in the UK seemed to be centre back Sam Sodje, who allegedly said that he could get large cash payments to footballers willing to get red cards during League One matches. Other people were arrested and put on trial for conspiracy to commit bribery, with five people in total being found guilty of the offenses – only one of the accused was cleared. But investigations also found that match-fixing was rife throughout Europe, including in the Champions League, with much of it linked to shady, international gambling websites.

<h4>Wayne Rooney’s Affairs</h4>

From Ryan Giggs to Wayne Rooney, Rooney is even more widely known for his scandalous life off the pitch than Giggsy. The first scandal that attached itself to him involved a grandmother named Patricia Tiernan, though Tiernan has always denied that she was a sex worker at the brothel Rooney had visited and that they’d slept together – though she did see him there while working at the reception. Later, he was linked more than once to another lady of the night, Jennifer Thompson, including one incident where it was alleged he’d paid for a threeway. He was done for drink driving with another woman in 2017 and has been spotted in suspicious circumstances with many more. Somehow, Coleen has forgiven him every time.

<h4>FIFA Corruption</h4>

In the 2010s, some people at FIFA thought it was suspicious that FIFA itself had decided to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively, and appointed external investigators to work out whether officials had been bribed. Russia responded by claiming every computer used in the World Cup bidding process had been destroyed, while Qatar was found to have paid someone to secure at least one vote, though this was dismissed because it was only one vote out of the thirteen needed. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, in 2024, it was announced that Saudi Arabia had been awarded the 2034 competition.

<h4>R v Terry</h4>

Back in 2012, John Terry was taken to court after being charged with racially abusing Anton Ferdinand of Queens Park Rangers. He was found not guilty of the specific charge of using racist language, and it was argued that the video evidence wasn’t entirely clear. Ferdinand himself hadn’t even heard what Terry had said, with the case against him being brought forward by the FA itself. Regardless of the court case, Terry was stripped of the England captaincy by the FA, and soon enough the FA became the story when its shoddy investigative work was called into question. Terry was banned from playing for four matches.

<h4>Storming Wembley</h4>

In 2021, England got all the way to the delayed finals of the 2020 Euros against Italy, and what followed was one of the darkest recent days in European football. A violent minority of England supporters who turned up on the day without buying tickets were so desperate to get into the stands that they broke down barriers, stormed the stadium, and overwhelmed security. These groups were already violent before the match began, causing chaos throughout London before attacking the fans who HAD bought tickets and attended normally. But the situation got even worse after the match. With England ultimately losing on penalties, the violence escalated even more, and the players who took those penalties were ruthlessly harassed with death threats and slurs.

<h4>English Football Corruption</h4>

In 2006, “Panorama” led an investigation into corruption in English football, investigating a slew of high-profile managers and executives – including “The Apprentice’s” Baroness Karren Brady, who was arrested and questioned, but never charged with anything. Specifically, club officials were alleged to be trying to bribe players into transferring to other teams and conspiring to tap them up, and many were filmed by “Panorama” as part of the investigation. Six agents were ultimately charged by the FA, though many of the charges were dropped. A handful did admit it, though, and the FA has certainly cracked down on these types of bribes since – as far as we know, anyway.

<h4>Murder of Andrés Escobar</h4>

One of the most horrific moments in the history of football came on the second of July, 1994, when Colombian centre-back Andrés Escobar was murdered in a carpark in the early hours of the morning. He was recognised and approached by three men and subsequently shot, all because he’d scored an own-goal in a group stage match between Colombia and the US in that year’s World Cup. The killers were caught and were sentenced to decades in prison, though they didn’t serve that long; it’s believed that they were cartel members who’d lost money on the match. It was a diabolical incident and national tragedy for Colombia. Escobar was commemorated with a statue and his charitable legacy lives on.

<h4>The Sun Reports on Hillsborough</h4>

The behaviour of South Yorkshire Police at Hillsborough Stadium that day was appalling and led directly to the overcrowding of the pen, with six people finally being charged for the disaster in 2017 after multiple inquiries. But something else happened in the aftermath of Hillsborough, something that led to the entire city of Liverpool refusing to buy copies of The Sun to this day. The Sun published a frontpage titled “The Truth” full of slander, blaming Liverpool supporters for the violence and making outrageous, false claims about the behaviour of fans who, in reality, were trying to save as many people from the stands as they could.

Let us know which sporting tragedies affected you the most.