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which ended up with a different player on the floor.

https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6569071/2025/08/23/marseille-rabiot-rowe-zerbi-longoria/

According to multiple reports in the French media, tempers flared in the visitors’ changing room when senior players including Rabiot and Argentinian goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli hit out at Rowe for a lack of effort on the pitch. Rabiot subsequently found himself in a sustained physical altercation with Rowe, during which the France midfielder struck the England Under-21 winger in the face. Amid the confusion, 17-year-old midfielder Darryl Bakola collapsed and had to be treated by the club’s medical staff. It took the intervention of security staff for order to be restored.

Sources at Marseille, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect relationships, said that other players in the squad were “shocked” by the level of violence involved in the altercation between Rabiot and Rowe.

In an interview with AFP, Marseille president Pablo Longoria described what had happened as “an incident of extreme seriousness and violence, something unheard of”.

“We had to take a decision after an incident that went beyond what is acceptable in a football club, as in any organisation,” the Spaniard explained. “Roberto De Zerbi has been coaching for 13 years, (director of football) Mehdi Benatia has been in top-level football since the age of 22 and I started in professional football at the age of 20. I think that the three of us have enough experience to say that we have never seen such a thing in a changing room.”

Longoria clarified that he had not directly witnessed the incident himself because he is currently banned from the changing room after accusing Ligue 1 referees of “corruption” last season.

Benatia echoed Longoria’s remarks, telling RMC Sport: “It was chaos, I’ve never seen that. People might get worked up, but you can’t go as far as a physical attack, a punch in the mouth, security having to come in and split you up…” Benatia added that the two players had compounded their predicament by failing to apologise for their behaviour in the 48 hours following the incident.

De Zerbi expressed full support for the stance taken by the club in his weekly press conference on Friday. “In a place of work, you have two employees punching each other, as if they were in an English pub, with a team-mate on the floor because he’d lost consciousness,” he said.