‘It was a shambles’ – Hearts have friendly with Almeria abandoned following mass brawl with punches thrown that saw two players sent off

Heart of Midlothian had a friendly with Spanish side Almeria abandoned after a mass brawl broke out between the players.

The Scottish Premiership side were in Malaga getting in some game time ahead of their season resuming on December 17.

1

Hearts had been 1-0 down to the Spanish club when an ‘altercation’ broke out between both sets of players.

Video footage posted on Twitter show punches being thrown and a lot of pushing and shoving.

Red cards were then handed out to After the chaos led to red cards for Alex Cochrane of Hearts and Rodrigo Ely of Almeria.

Hearts boss Robbie Neilson then led his players off the pitch following the incident and the match was then abandoned.

Posting a message on Twitter, the Scottish Premiership club said: Following altercations between both sets of players, the decision has been made to abandon the match.

“Robbie Neilson will speak to Hearts TV shortly.”

Speaking to Hearts TV, Neilson said: “It was a very competitive game and all of a sudden on the far side there was a tackle from Alex which I thought was just a standard tackle and then all hell broke loose.

“The ref just totally lost control of it – benches were over and there was about 60 people on the pitch.

“It was just a bit of a shambles, so we just felt that in a pre-season game, there’s no point carrying on because tensions were extremely high to say the least.

“There’s always going to be a competitive edge but there’s a line that you can’t really cross and I think it got crossed several times.”

The club currently sit fifth in the Scottish Premiership, but have had a nightmare time on their mid-season trip to Spain.

On Friday, they lost 4-0 to Championship side Blackburn and now saw their match with Almeria abandoned.