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There might not be any love lost between Martin Skrtel and Diego Costa on the pitch, but it seems there are no hard feelings between the former Liverpool and Chelsea stars off it.
The pair came up against each other as Liverpool Legends took on their Chelsea counterparts at Stamford Bridge on Saturday. Ryan Babel’s late goal earned the Reds a 1-0 win as they completed a double over the Blues this year, having also beaten them 2-0 at Anfield back in March thanks to a Peter Crouch double.
Goals were certainly hard to come by on this occasion, with the game reminiscent of some of the tight battles the two sides have had in the Premier League, and Skrtel and Costa provided plenty of fire to proceedings.
The pair clashed towards the end of the first half when Skrtel slid in on Costa, and despite the former Liverpool defender winning the ball, his opponent clearly took issue with the challenge.
Costa appeared to kick out at Skrtel, leading to the pair going head-to-head as the situation threatened to boil over.
Just moments later, Costa would try to gain some revenge as he slid in late on Skrtel, with the former Spain international receiving the ignominy of picking up a yellow card in a charity game for his troubles.
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Half-time came at just the right moment to help de-escalate things, with both players going on to avoid any further punishment as Skrtel ended up on the winning side.
The pair do have history, with Costa having been handed a three-game ban after he was caught stamping on Skrtel’s foot in a League Cup semi-final back in January 2015. The striker would go on to avoid another suspension later that same year after another bust-up with the Liverpool star, despite appearing to flick his boot toward Skrtel’s chest.
Despite all that, there doesn’t appear to be any bad blood between the two former players.
Costa posted a picture of himself with Skrtel after the game to his Instagram story, with the latter putting his arm around the former Chelsea star as the pair posed with their fists.
Costa tagged Skrtel in the picture, and captioned it with a few emojis, including a laughing-crying face and a love heart, showing there are no bad feelings between the duo.
Liverpool.com says: Good to see there's no hard feelings between Skrtel and Costa in the end. To be fair, if we had to guess which players could end up getting in trouble in a charity game, it would have been those two!
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