Some time in the late 1980s, Internazionale were losing an away match by several goals when in the last minute they were awarded a meaningless penalty. The fearsome Argentine centre-back Daniel Passarella began galloping forward to take it, but before he could get there Alessandro Altobelli, reasoning like any striker that a goal is a goal, stepped up and hit the ball into the net.
A former Inter star who played in that game tells the story that in the changing-room, Passarella threw a fit. "It's always the same!" he screamed. "At 0-0 no-one dares take a penalty, but when it doesn't matter anymore they all do." Grabbing his genitals, he added: "You are cowards! You have no balls, no cojones."
This went on for some time. Most of the Inter players were used to Passarella and paid no attention, but after a while Altobelli could take no more. Striding up to the Argentine, he asked: "You talking about me?"
Passarella knocked him out with a single punch, stripped, and wandered off to the showers. A few minutes later Altobelli came too. He stared about him enraged and then, spotting the fruit bowl customary in Italian changing-rooms of the era, grabbed a little knife meant for peeling oranges. In the shower stalls he found a naked Passarella calmly shampooing his hair. "Come on then!" Passarella cooed at his knife-wielding colleague.
Altobelli didn't know what to do. He didn't really want to stab his team-mate to death like Norman Bates in Psycho. He would probably have been fined, or even transfer-listed. So he just stood in front of Passarella waving the knife for a while until, to his relief, other players dragged him away and he could pretend this was happening against his will. All the while Passarella continued washing his hair.