Brawls, red cards and bullet scandals – inside the wild career of Porto hardman Pepe

Arsenal will have to get past a familiar and still formidable foe to keep alive their dreams of winning the Champions League this season.

Because lining up against them in Porto in the last 16 showdown will be a certain Kepler Laveran de Lima Ferreira. AKA – Pepe.

One of the best – not to mention most uncompromising and controversial – defenders of his generation. Considering how many battles the Portuguese hard man has been in down the years, most of which he instigated himself, it’s hard to believe he is still operating at the highest level.

Pepe is now 40, but despite this, has made 20 appearances for Porto this season to help them challenge for the Portuguese title and reach the knockout stages of the Champions League. He’s also been booked three times and sent off once, following an ill-tempered clash with bitter rivals Sporting Lisbon back in December.

Receiving cards of both colours has been the backdrop to Pepe’s long and distinguished career. And heaven knows how he’d get on in the Premier League if blue ones were ever introduced!

Pepe has been booked a staggering 212 times since making his professional debut for Maritimo back in 2002 – and sent off 17 times. In short, he’s seen more cards than a professional poker player. The notorious hot-head will go down as one of the dirtiest stars of all time. His lowlight reel contains so much violence it should come with a government warning.

During his time at Real Madrid, where Pepe also won three Champions League titles and three La Liga titles, Pepe loved nothing more than to make the great Lionel Messi one of his regular victims. Messi scored a record 26 El Clasico goals for Barcelona against Real, which did little to subdue Pepe’s anger.

In one such game, Pepe is reported to have said to his Barca rival, “against me, you always s**t yourself”, to which Messi replied, “against you, what I actually do is always score”.

In one game in 2012, Pepe even found the time to seek out Messi en-route to harassing the referee, and stamped on his hand while the Argentine icon was laying on the turf.

He was even accused of dropping a bullet from a gun onto the pitch during another violent clash between Porto and Sporting in 2022. While Pepe hit out at FIFA and told them to “hand the cup to Argentina” in the wake of Portugal’s World Cup exit to Morocco in the quarter finals in Qatar.

He will turn 41 next week – but it’s safe to say he hasn’t mellowed with age.

Arsenal, you have been warned.