Jamie Carragher has been filmed grabbing a fan's phone from his hand as he makes his way through a heckling crowd.
The former England defender, 44, was caught on camera while walking through supporters at Nottingham Forest's City Ground on Sunday (August 28) as they took on Tottenham Hotspur. Carragher was covering the game as a pundit for Sky Sports and was being goaded by the home fans.
Footage shows the Liverpool legend grabbing a mobile phone from a fan before exchanging words with another. He is then escorted onto the side of the pitch by stewards, where he gestures to the home fans - who had been calling him a 'Scouse b******'.
Today, Carragher played down the incident when approached for comment - saying: “I was being escorted from one part of The City Ground to another, past some vocal fans with plenty of heckling. For me, no harm was intended from either side.”
Video footage shows Carragher making his way down from the commentary box whilst working at the game, which Tottenham won 2-0. As he is walking with stewards, one fan seems to push his phone in Carragher's face.
Carragher then looks to snatch the phone out of his hand while other supporters hurl abuse at him. Another clip shows Carragher arguing with a separate fan before eventually making his way down the stairs to the pitch.
Forest supporters can then be heard collectively chanting more abuse at Carragher, before he turns round and shrugs his shoulders in their direction.
An eyewitness claimed: "He was getting a lot of stick when he was coming down the stairs and then he stopped and grabbed some lad's phone. He seemed pretty riled up by it all - at one point I thought he was going to properly kick off."
Carragher was previously suspended by Sky after footage emerged of him spitting at a teenage girl following a match in 2018. The 41-year-old Liverpool legend reacted after a Manchester United fan goaded him as their cars pulled up to a set of traffic lights.
He issued an apology on live television and did not resume his role with Sky Sports for five months after the incident. Last year, he opened up on the aftermath which he said "knocked him for six" for six months.
He told Gary Neville on The Overlap : "Coming home from Old Trafford and then when I lost my job at Sky - I'm someone who's quite on the front foot, if someone attacks me.
"But that knocked me for six months. For a good six months I wasn't myself. I'd get up in the morning and just have that pain in my stomach, oh that did happen. I went to see Steve Peters [a psychologist] after it. I felt really bad, embarrassed, my family, my mum or dad. And the kids.
"I remember getting back to the house that night when I'd been at Sky. I haven't seen the kids, they're at school, and you just get back and we all sat together and it was tough. Even though we're in the public eye, we're not the royals, Beckham, big stars. You read them on the front page. When it's you, everywhere I went it felt like people were looking at me."
He added: "It'd come back to me, but it was done. I owned it. I didn't blame anyone else. I accepted it. I took my medicine. Whatever s*** is thrown at me I'll take it. And that's the way I was as a player."
The former England defender has since rebuild his media career, recognised today as one of the best pundits in the game. During his coverage of Nottingham Forest's defeat against Tottenham, he also admitted being "wound up" by Spurs striker Richarlison, who caused controversy for showboating before being fouled by Brennan Johnson.
"It's not right, you can't just go and boot people," Carragher said on commentary. "You can't do that, but what's he doing?
"He just winds people up that lad. He winds me up. What do you expect Johnson to do? You're not condoning that but..."
"It doesn’t matter what we all think of the #Richarlison showboating, it’s what the opposition think," Carragher later explained on Twitter. "They thought it was taking the p**s and tried to take him out.
"You can’t condone that but the worst that happens is a red card, for Spurs it’s a bad injury. That’s why it’s daft."
