Sleeping with the enemy: football players who played for both rival clubs

When you're a Manchester United fan you can't imagine ever playing for Liverpool. The same holds for Celtic and Rangers, AC Milan and Internazionale and certainly for River Plate and Boca Juniors, where football often means war... literally.

Yet, from time to time, some players cheat on their team and its fans and go sleeping with The Enemy. One shouldn't, but once a traitor...

As these kinds of things often come in handy playing football quizzes, let's have a look at some of them.

Red (Devil)? (Red) Devil?

The first one ever was Tom Chorlton, leaving Liverpool for United. The last one was Phil Chisnall, already 53 years ago, fortunately. Ever since, no one ever dared to move anymore... although Liverpool tried to contract Gabriel Ivan Heinze from the Mancunians in 2007.

The others were: Jackie Sheldon, Tom Miller, Fred Hopkin, Tommy Reid, Ted Savage, Allenby Chilton and Thomas McNulty.

Italian double: AC? Inter? Why not try both?

Yeah, why always you?...

Unlike the above Red list, the number of players who joined both AC Milan and Internazionale is much longer. 34 players once wore red and black to switch to blue and black. Or vice versa.

Big names are Antonio Cassano, Mario Balotelli, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Hernan Crespo, Clarence Seedorf, Christian Vieri, Andrea Pirlo, Ronaldo, Patrick Vieira, Edgar Davids, Roberto Baggio, Francesco Toldo and Aldo Serena. And then there was also a guy named "Guiseppe Meazza" or so... Reminds us of an Italian stadium...

(Old) Firm

You wouldn't believe it, but in fact 19 guys decided to leave the one Glasgow club for the other. Honestly, most of them did a long time ago, but since the year 2000 they were three to try the delicate move: Kenny Miller, Steven Pressley and the last one was Mark Brown, who joined Celtic in 2007, after having played for Rangers from 1997 until 2001.

Superrisico?

The match between Argentinian clubs River Plate and Boca Juniors is said to be the biggest rivalry match on earth, also known as the "Superclasico". The absolute nadir was in 1968, with the Puerta 12 tragedy, in which more than 70 fans were killed and more than 100 were injured...

Quite dangerous match, thus. So you would think even players wouldn't dare to go from the one team to the other. Still, compared to the other matches mentioned above, a large number of footballers did so. Some of the most famous ones were Abel Balbo, Gabriel Batistuta and Claudio Caniggia.

@funnyfootballinsta

... and then there's Ronaldo

You know him: the one and only Ronaldo. No, not the CR7, but R9 aka Ronnie. Next to him being one of the most gifted strikers ever, he was also one of the players who managed to play for several rival clubs. Or don't you remember these?