Former Aston Villa captain Micah Richards has recalled the remarkable story where he was suspended for putting Federico Fernandez in a headlock and punching him.
Micah Richards said “I was at Aston Villa, I’ve never had a red card in my career. There was an incident with Fernandez at Swansea, he’s at Newcastle now. He came over for a corner, the goalkeeper came out, I gave him a little nudge and Fernandez pushed me and head-butted me! I said to him ‘okay, no worries, I’m not going to do anything on the pitch, wait until we get to the tunnel’ and he sort of just laughed it off. At this time, we’d lost the game, Swansea beat us and I was raging. We get to the tunnel and he comes over, probably to apologise, but I saw red. I think it was the BBC actually, they saw the tunnel ruffling and it was me with Fernandez, I had him in a headlock and I just started punching him.”
Richards, who retired from football at the age of 31 due to knee injuries, was never sent off during his career in the Premier League or at International level. However, the ex- Villa man was handed a ban by the FA for a remarkable incident after a defeat to Swansea City, where Richards admitted he “saw red” after a 2-1 defeat in October 2015.