The Battle of the Buffet: Who Hit Ferguson With Pizza?

Pizza All Over Ferguson

Alex Ferguson came off the Old Trafford pitch after his team's 2-0 win over Arsenal and ended up, by his own account, with pizza all over him in the crowded tunnel. "The next thing I knew I had pizza all over me," he said later, describing the moment¹. He had just watched his side beat the Premier League's reigning champions, and somewhere in the scrum behind him, a slice of pizza thrown from the Arsenal side found his face¹.

Nobody in that tunnel would say, at least not on record, who had thrown it. Ferguson himself insisted for years that he simply did not know. "They say it was Cesc Fabregas who threw the pizza at me but, to this day, I have no idea who the culprit is," he wrote in his autobiography^2,3.

The match that preceded it mattered enormously. Arsenal arrived at Old Trafford on 24 October 2004 with a 49-match unbeaten run in the Premier League, a record stretch that included their entire undefeated 2003-04 title campaign¹. A win or a draw would have pushed that streak to 50. United, struggling for consistency that season and sitting well behind Arsenal in the table, had everything to prove against the side the English press had started calling the Invincibles⁴.

The rivalry between the clubs was already combustible. Ferguson and Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger had sparred for years, as had their captains, Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira⁵. The two clubs had clashed physically before, most notably in September 2003 in a match the press dubbed the Battle of Old Trafford, after Arsenal players reacted furiously to Ruud van Nistelrooy's missed last-minute penalty and the sending-off of Vieira^4,5.

The October 2004 rematch delivered its own flashpoint. In the 73rd minute, Wayne Rooney went down under a challenge from Arsenal's Sol Campbell, and referee Mike Riley awarded United a penalty^4,1. Van Nistelrooy, who had missed his own penalty against Arsenal the year before, converted it to put United 1-0 up, celebrating with evident intensity¹. Rooney added a second goal in the 90th minute to seal the win and end Arsenal's run at 49¹.

Arsenal's players believed the penalty decision, and Rooney's part in winning it, was unjust, and the argument did not end with the final whistle^4,1. Several Arsenal players were held back as tempers flared, among them Thierry Henry, who was reportedly also angry that Rio Ferdinand had been given the man-of-the-match award¹. Ferguson later recalled Henry confronting him directly, hands raised, asking: "What do you want to do about it?"⁶

The argument that spilled into the tunnel reportedly began elsewhere first: Wenger confronting Van Nistelrooy over a challenge on Ashley Cole, with Ferguson stepping in to tell Wenger to leave his players alone¹. What followed was a general scrum of players and staff pushing each other in the narrow space leading to the dressing rooms, with Arsenal's equipment manager suffering a bloody nose and a United security guard reportedly struck on the head trying to separate people⁷. Reports from the time mentioned pea soup, tomato soup and sandwiches flying alongside the pizza, though pizza is the detail that stuck^4,7.

For years afterward, suspicion settled on one player without confirmation. Arsenal defender Martin Keown, in a 2014 radio interview, named Cesc Fàbregas, then just 17 and an unused substitute that day, as the thrower, offering a teasing description: "From what I understand, it was a Spanish fella with great technique. Even when it came to the pizza he had great technique. He threw it like a Frisbee"^8,1. Fàbregas denied it at the time, according to French reporting on the saga⁹.

The denial held until 4 October 2017, when Fàbregas, by then playing for Chelsea, was asked directly on the Sky show A League of Their Own by host James Corden whether he was the culprit¹⁰. He said yes. "All of a sudden, I heard noises from the tunnel and I thought what's happening? So I go out with my slice of pizza and I saw Sol Campbell, Rio Ferdinand, Martin Keown... everyone pushing each other," he said¹⁰. "I was like, I want to get in but I don't know how to and I threw... peeew... just threw it," he continued, adding that he only realized afterward whom he had hit¹⁰. He apologized on air: "I apologise Sir Alex, really didn't mean to do that!"¹⁰

Ferguson, by his own account, never got that apology in person, and for thirteen years had only rumor and Keown's joke to go on. The slice that rolled down his suit in the Old Trafford tunnel in October 2004 had, it turned out, a known author all along, just not one willing to say so until a television sofa in 2017^10,1.

Timeline

1. 4 May 2003Arsenal's last Premier League defeat before their unbeaten run began.
2. September 2003Arsenal and Manchester United clash in the 'Battle of Old Trafford' over a Van Nistelrooy penalty miss.
3. 24 October 2004Manchester United beat Arsenal 2-0 at Old Trafford, ending Arsenal's 49-match unbeaten run; a tunnel brawl follows in which Ferguson is hit by a thrown pizza slice.
4. 2014Martin Keown publicly names Cesc Fabregas as the likely pizza thrower in a radio interview.
5. 4 October 2017Cesc Fabregas admits on Sky's A League of Their Own that he threw the pizza.

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