‘Keep fighting for the badge’: Arbeloa makes passionate defence of Real Madrid fight duo

• Coach insists he is ‘proud’ of Valverde and Tchouaméni

• France defender is in squad for game at Barcelona

Álvaro Arbeloa insisted Fede Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni should be given the chance to “keep fighting for the badge” after a second dressing-room bust-up in two days left the Uruguayan on the floor and needing to be taken to hospital for stitches in his head.

The morning after Real Madrid fined the players a record €500,000 each for the incident and the morning before they face Barcelona in the clásico, the coach gave an extraordinary press conference in which he claimed the dressing room was “healthy”, said that he was “proud” of his footballers and insisted that he would not allow them to be “burnt at the stake” for what they had done, saying that everyone makes mistakes, even the club legend Juanito who famously stamped on Lothar Matthaus’s head. He also said he had seen worse, recalling the night in 2007 that Craig Bellamy attacked his Liverpool teammate John Arne Riise with a golf club.