‘My own team-mates booed me after I moved to Arsenal’ Sol Campbell recalls how Gunners team-mates helped ‘prepare’ him for toxic White Hart Lane return

It remains one of football’s greatest ‘betrayals’.

Sol Campbell’s decision to walk away from Tottenham Hotspur and join fierce rivals Arsenal at the expiry of his contract in the summer of 2001 is etched into British football folklore.

Just 26 years old at the time and at the peak of his powers, Spurs fans were already wounded by Campbell’s decision to leave on a free. But it was his choice of club that really stung. Campbell went on to make more than 200 appearances for the Gunners, winning two Premier League titles and three FA Cups.

While every clash against Spurs saw the player vilified by opposition supporters, Campbell remembers his own Arsenal team-mates even booed him in the lead up to his first North London Derby in red – a 1-1 draw at White Hart Lane in November 2001 – as revealed by Dennis Bergkamp and Ian Wright on a recent podcast.

'I actually think the reaction inside the ground shocked a lot of my Arsenal team-mates' Sol Campbell recalls a toxic return to White Hart Lane

“It was just the lads mucking around in training, a bit of banter,” Campbell tells FourFourTwo on behalf of Paddy Power. “But yeah, I think they were trying to prepare me for what was to come.”

Campbell was greeted by a hurricane of boos, whistles, hurled projectiles and foul-mouthed songs throughout a bruising encounter that also saw opponents – his own former team-mates – stick the boot in.

“I actually think the reaction inside the ground shocked a lot of my Arsenal team-mates,” remembers Campbell, who made 73 England appearances between 1996 and 2007. “I’d expected it, of course. And the lads knew I would be booed, but none of them anticipated just how bad it would be.

“After the game started it really hit them,” continues Campbell. “I think that’s when they knew just how much I was going to be dealing with, that day. That’s when they woke up. Personally, I don’t think many of them would have been able to take as much abuse as I took during that game. I don’t think they could have. They were strong guys and incredible players. But to take that level of abuse in one game isn’t something everyone can deal with.

“It was a horrible atmosphere, even more so than during normal North London Derbies. It was a level of hatred that lingered in North London for a long time afterwards.”