Violence & Brawls ·
The Pizza Cesc Fàbregas Admitted Throwing
After Manchester United ended Arsenal’s unbeaten run at Old Trafford in 2004, a slice of pizza struck Sir Alex Ferguson. Fàbregas later said he had thrown it—but had not meant to hit him.
On 24 October 2004, Manchester United beat Arsenal 2–0 at Old Trafford, ending Arsenal’s 49-match unbeaten Premier League run. In the tunnel confrontation after the match, a slice of pizza struck United manager Sir Alex Ferguson in the face. Thirteen years later, Cesc Fàbregas admitted throwing it. He said he had not meant to hit Ferguson.
Arsenal had arrived with the chance to extend their run to 50 matches, having gone through the previous league season unbeaten. Instead, Ruud van Nistelrooy scored a penalty after referee Mike Riley judged that Sol Campbell had fouled Wayne Rooney; Rooney added the second goal in stoppage time. Many Arsenal supporters believed Rooney had dived. Tempers flared in the tunnel afterward.
Ferguson described the confrontation in his 2013 autobiography. Van Nistelrooy, he recalled, had returned to the dressing room complaining that Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger had been “giving him stick” as he left the pitch. Ferguson went out to confront Wenger: “You leave my players alone.” Then, he wrote, “The next thing I knew I had pizza all over me.”
Ferguson appeared for his post-match interview showered and wearing a tracksuit. The episode became known as the “Battle of the Buffet.” Fàbregas was named as a likely culprit in later accounts, but Ferguson did not claim to know who had thrown the pizza. “They say it was Cesc Fabregas who threw the pizza at me but, to this day, I have no idea who the culprit was,” he wrote in 2013.
The admission came in 2017 on the television show A League of Their Own. Asked by host James Corden whether he had thrown the pizza, Fàbregas answered, “Yes.” He said he had heard noises and gone out carrying a slice, then saw people pushing one another. “I was like, I want to get in but I don’t know how to,” he said, before describing how he threw it.
Justin Hoyte, who had travelled with Arsenal but was not in the matchday squad, recalled the aftermath in a 2020 interview with Goal. “I saw the pizza, but I didn’t see it hit him,” he said. He remembered the surprise and security entering as people went back and forth. The defeat, he said, mattered more to the players than the thrown food: “We were just disappointed we’d lost, but everyone was laughing about it afterwards.”
Fàbregas was 17 at the time and had not played. Speaking to beIN Sports in 2019, he said he had picked up the pizza because he was hungry, then encountered a tunnel full of bigger men arguing. “It wasn’t intentional,” he said. His public admission two years earlier had ended with an apology: “I apologise Sir Alex, really didn’t mean to do that!”