11 Top Footballers Who Once Went on Strike

11 moments where confrontation replaced compromise, and absence spoke louder than any public statement.

Football has always claimed to be a collective pursuit. Eleven moving as one. A club before the individual. A badge heavy with obligation. That idea still sells shirts and fills stands, even as the modern game stretches further away from its roots with every broadcast deal and ownership model.

• Brazil’s 10 Best No.10s of All-time.

Against that backdrop, refusal remains the unforgivable act. Miss chances and forgiveness follow. Argue with a referee, and memory fades. Drift through matches, and excuses emerge.

Step away entirely, however, and the response hardens. A player who refuses selection, declines training, or withdraws effort crosses a line that supporters, executives, and teammates rarely redraw.

And yet, history keeps repeating itself. Ambition grows louder than loyalty, with power tilting toward the individual. Silence becomes a weapon. Boots come off. Pressure builds. Sometimes it works. Often it scars. It always reveals something uncomfortable about football’s balance of power.

11 Top Footballers Who Once Went on Strike

1. Alexander Isak

• Newcastle United → Liverpool

At Newcastle, Alexander Isak felt like a future unfolding in real time. Movement smooth, finishing clinical, presence growing with each month. Then patience ran out, and availability shifted.

• The Premier League's 10 Best Right-Backs of All Time.

Engagement cooled. The message, though never declared, became obvious enough to ignite fury among supporters who had invested belief as much as money. Newcastle United’s hierarchy resisted until resistance became expensive.

Liverpool arrived in the summer of 2025 with scale and certainty, bending the situation through sheer financial gravity. The deal landed. The spotlight widened.

The timing betrayed him. Injury intervened, rhythm vanished, and the narrative stalled. The strike succeeded structurally. The footballing verdict remains suspended.

2. Diego Costa

• Chelsea → Atlético Madrid

Diego Costa operated on confrontation, and it seemed harmony never interested him. When communication with Antonio Conte collapsed back in June 2017, the fallout came without theatre.

A text message severed the relationship. Costa responded by removing himself entirely, returning to Brazil, while reigning champions at the time, Chelsea, resumed the next campaign without him.

Time dragged. January offered escape. Atletico Madrid restored familiarity, intensity, and purpose. Goals followed. Titles returned. This was defiance without regret, resolved without apology. As for Conte, he was eventually sacked after missing out on Champions League qualification.

3. Clint Dempsey

• Fulham → Tottenham Hotspur

Clint Dempsey sought elevation, and Fulham offered continuity. A refusal early in the season exposed the standoff. Public statements framed resolve, though leverage proved thinner than expected.

After the Whites initially declined an offer from Liverpool, the Reds never committed to Dempsey, who scored 50 goals in 184 league appearances at Craven Cottage, and Tottenham Hotspur stepped in instead.

North London delivered a brief chapter rather than a transformation. One season passed, then departure followed. The protest altered direction, not destination.

4. Pierre van Hooijdonk

• Nottingham Forest → Vitesse

Promotion bred expectation, and expectation bred dissatisfaction. Van Hooijdonk returned from international duty convinced his environment no longer matched his stature.

A move failed to materialise, and withdrawal followed. Training took place elsewhere, and separation ensued, replacing dialogue. The eventual exit arrived after relegation. His career recovered elsewhere, though his reputation absorbed lasting damage.

5. Cristiano Ronaldo

• Al-Nassr → uncertainty

Even at this stage, Cristiano Ronaldo still bends gravity. Not on the pitch as relentlessly as before, but within institutions, hierarchies, and power structures that reshape themselves around his presence.

At Al-Nassr, the project was supposed to orbit him. Instead, comparison crept in. Other clubs under the same ownership accelerated, recruited, and sharpened. His did not, well, according to the Portuguese.

Dissatisfaction followed, then estrangement came to the fore. Availability became conditional. Training turned political. Refusal carried weight because of who he is. A global figure declining participation sends tremors through dressing rooms and boardrooms alike. It reframes authority. It invites imitation.

Whether this ends in movement or reconciliation remains unclear. What is certain is that the act itself alters the landscape. When a player of this magnitude steps away, the gesture echoes far beyond one club, one league, or one season. His legacy survives, but control remains contested.

6. Matheus Nunes

• Wolverhampton Wanderers → Manchester City

At Wolves, Matheus Nunes existed in flashes. Athletic promise surfaced, then receded, never quite settling into something defined. The talent was visible, though the purpose around it felt unresolved.

"I was disappointed with how it ended, it wasn't necessary the stance Matheus took, but we ended with a good resolution for everyone," said Wolves sporting director Matt Hobbs after Nunes decided to miss training sessions to force the move to the Etihad.

The exit fractured goodwill, yet Manchester City offered something Wolves never could: clarity. Pep Guardiola dismantled the uncertainty, repositioned him, and reduced his game to function before flair. Responsibility followed. Trust followed that, and some medals accumulated quickly.

7. George Best

• Manchester United → departure

Best did not plan a rebellion. It arrived through erosion rather than design. Excess overtook structure, and absence replaced confrontation.

Authority lost its grip long before separation became official. The brilliance never faded, though the platform beneath it kept shrinking.

Once United disappeared from his life, elite football disappeared with it. The fall was gradual, irreversible, and watched in disbelief. That said, his legacy remains nothing short of epic.

8. Riyad Mahrez

• Leicester City → Manchester City

After improbability rewrote his career, Riyad Mahrez sought inevitability. Requests stalled, patience thinned, and distance crept into training ground routines.

Leicester City delayed, protective of what they stood to lose. Manchester City waited, confident that time would tilt the balance.

When the move landed, everything accelerated, and eventually trophies arrived in volume. European glory also followed. This strike rewired his legacy rather than placing it at risk.

9. Paul Scholes

• Manchester United

Frustration surfaced briefly, sharp and unmistakable, when Paul Scholes refused to play against Arsenal in a League Cup match. There was no drawn-out campaign, no public standoff, just a momentary withdrawal, born of impulse rather than strategy.

Reflection followed quickly. Accountability arrived privately and fully, repairing trust with Sir Alex Ferguson before it had a chance to fracture.

What might have splintered instead reinforced his place. Continuity became the reward, and legacy the outcome. Very few step back from confrontation so swiftly. Fewer still emerge stronger for having done so.

10. Carlos Tevez

• Manchester City

Carlos Tevez's refusal to play for Roberto Mancini's Cityzens struck loudly. Authority stiffened and lines hardened. Detachment took hold, drawn out and visible, with months passing beyond the frame of competition.

Explanations shifted as pressure mounted, though resolution remained elusive. The standoff felt permanent until football reasserted its pull.

When goals returned, perspective changed. Success rewrote the episode, softening edges without erasing the fracture beneath. The split closed on the surface, though its outline never fully disappeared.

11. N’Golo Kanté

• Al Ittihad → (Most likely Fenerbahçe)

N’Golo Kanté arrived at Al Ittihad with the quiet authority of a man whose career had already been defined, yet even here, his influence remained undimmed.

When a move to Fenerbahçe faltered in January 2026, at the final hurdle due to an administrative collapse, the Frenchman, who was left in suspended motion, responded not with words but with absence, removing himself from training to assert control over a transfer gone awry.

The timing could not have been worse for his club, which had already felt the loss of Karim Benzema and struggled to secure reinforcements.

Kanté’s decision cast a long shadow over the squad, a reminder that even the most composed players can wield their power, turning patience into leverage and forcing attention on a journey that extended beyond the confines of the Saudi league.

11 Top Footballers Who Once Went on Strike