Exclusive: 'People being sick everywhere' - Jermaine Jenas says 'horrendous' lasagna-gate ignited Spurs-West Ham rivalry

Jermaine Jenas has explained how the “horrendous” ordeal of the infamous ‘lasagna-gate’ game in 2006 “ignited” a rivalry between Tottenham and West Ham.

Going into the final day of the 2005-06 season, Spurs faced The Hammers needing to match or better Arsenal’s result against Wigan to reach the UEFA Champions League for the first time.

But a large number of first-team players fell ill the night before with suspected food poisoning - a hotel lasagna coming to be regarded as suspect No. 1 - and the queasy Tottenham players slumped to a 2-1 defeat to agonisingly drop below Arsenal, who beat Wigan to qualify at their rivals’ expense.

It later transpired that an outbreak of norovirus had been to blame for the violent sickness that swept through the squad.

Jenas looked back on the infamous day with former West Ham captain Mark Noble, and explained why it also sparked a “dislike” of their east London counterparts.

“The moment [the rivalry] hit me, from a Spurs perspective, that there’s a dislike now, was when we apparently got poisoned with lasagna,” TNT Sports pundit Jenas said to Noble.

“Last game of the season, we’ve got Arsenal on the ropes. We’ve just got to beat yourselves [West Ham] and we’re in the Champions League for the first time.

“The game was what it was. I think we went 1-0 up and you ended up beating us [West Ham in fact took the lead - ed].

“There was this moment where we were sat in the dressing room and there were eight, nine, 10 people being sick everywhere.

“One is in the toilet, one’s in the sink, one’s in a bucket, everyone’s just being sick everywhere.

“And then all you could hear was the biggest party ever going on in the dressing room opposite.”

Noble was not involved in the game but went on to become a West Ham legend and club captain in later years.

“It’s mad you say that because until this day, I’ve never spoken to a Spurs player about that day,” Noble said.

“Obviously I heard. But I’ve never had a Spurs player say the boys were being sick. We just thought ‘oh yeah, there were one or two players’.”

Jenas, who did not play but was there on the day, went on to explain quite how bad the situation got on the pitch for the Spurs players.

“Edgar [Davids] was the only player that didn’t have any type of food poisoning and he had a nightmare on the day,” Jenas said.

“This is no joke. I was sat there with Martin Jol as the game is going on, or just behind him, and he’s turning around. You know sometimes you can hear the manager saying: ‘he’s having one’, this that and the other, let’s take him off.

“So he’s gone up to get the board up to take off Edgar, and Michael Carrick has come running over and gone: ‘Don’t you dare - I can’t last another second on this pitch, take me off now’. He had to keep Edgar on - that’s how bad Carrick and everybody else was.

“It was just everybody being sick, it was horrendous. But the minute I heard that music, I was like ‘something has ignited now’.”

West Ham face Tottenham in the Premier League on Tuesday, live on TNT Sports and discovery+.

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