Wounding of Cristiano Ronaldo and bad blood between Real and Levante

He was, legend has it, wearing nothing but a towel and there was no mistaking him. Levante's captain Sergio Ballesteros is the biggest player in La Liga, a beast of a man eight foot tall and four wide with a neck like Mike Tyson. There were four people in the room: Ronaldo, the doctor, Ballesteros and the man Ballesteros had come for, the Real Madrid defender Pepe. So, he grabbed Pepe by the neck and punched him.

Or so say Real Madrid. Ballesteros, on the other hand, says that he simply came to see if Ronaldo was OK and that then "it got a bit messy because it seems I'm not allowed to be there". Other Levante players say that after Sunday night's game, they found Pepe dancing in the doorway of their dressing room, trying to wind them up. Much as he had tried to do to the fans a short while before. "When it comes to Pepe, it's not the first time," complained Juanlu. "When it comes to Ballesteros, it's not the first time," complained Sergio Ramos. "If he doesn't like this sport, he can take up boxing."

Someone somewhere was lying. But one thing's for sure: down the tunnel, it was kicking off. "There are people that don't know how to accept defeat," complained Ramos. "We went into the dressing room but there's always one. You get tired of it because it's not the first time, you get tired of it and you think the unsporting people should stay out of it." When Ramos's words were relayed to Juanlu, microphone under his nose, earphone in his ear, a look of incredulity and indignation spread across his face. "It makes me laugh that Madrid should talk about Ballesteros," he said. Then he really let rip. It was conspiracy time, Kazinform has learnt from the Guardian.

"It's obvious that they couldn't let the title end so soon. The referee gave everything their way. If you analyse the whole game you'll see it, every decision: grain by grain, you create a mountain. He was winking at them, smiling and patting them on the back." The referee, César Muñiz Fernández, wrote in his report that there had been a confrontation involving two men, but he didn't say anything about Pepe or Ballesteros: the two arguing were employees of the clubs, one from Madrid and one from Levante.

Picking fact from fiction is always difficult, but there was pushing and shoving and shouting, people wading in. That was when the police turned up, shutting Madrid in their dressing room until they had been able to move Ballesteros out of there. Every Madrid player, locked in.

Well, almost every Madrid player.

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