“Yes, I punched him in the field and he fell unconscious, but I never pulled out a knife”

The Moroccan footballer Al-Sailiya Qatar Younes Belhanda36, responded yesterday to accusations of violence made by a former teammate with whom he played for the Turkish Adana Demirspor, Birkir Bjarnason, in 2022 and during training. The former Montpellier, Schalke and Nice player, among others, confirmed a fight but denied having pulled out a knife to threaten him.

Invited to the program presented by Daniel Riolo, Belhanda spoke about the fight he had with the Icelandic player before the start of the 2022-23 season. “It is true that I punched him in the field, he fell unconscious. But waiting for him with a knife, no, there was never a knife,” he stated.

“He was a guy who elbowed a lot. During a training session, he came up to me and elbowed me twice and then another… I turned around, bang, KO (simulates a punch). He fell to the ground. Then he made a big fuss, started calling the press… The next day, to apologize, I told him: ‘If you’re not happy, hit me again’. I didn’t want him to come back. He had to apologize to me before he could come back (to the team).”

According to Bjarnason’s story, detailed at the time in the Icelandic podcast ‘Chess after dark’, at the end of training and returning to the locker room, Belhanda was waiting for him with a knife.