Article body analysed
Tom Pope has revealed John Stones ‘wouldn’t even look or speak to him’ after he called the England defender a ‘weak***’. Pope is best known for his time at Port Vale, with him scoring 115 goals for the English Football League side - but England’s defender remembers him for totally different reasons. In 2019, as the Three Lions lost 3-1 to Netherlands in the Nations League, Pope wrote on X, then known as Twitter: "I know he’s on £150k a week, I know he’s a million times better player than me but I’d love to play against John Stones every week! I’d get 40 a season! ” To add further salt in the wounds, he added the hashtags ‘soft’ and ‘weak***’ to his post. Well, less than a year later, Pope got to put his theory to the test, as Port Vale drew Man City away in the third round of the FA Cup. City won 4-1 that day, but Pope scored Vale’s only goal past Stones, who was at the centre of the home side’s defence, and the rest of the back line. Now, Pope has revealed that Stones had clearly taken note of his earlier tweet, and the defender had ‘refused to speak’ to him after the match. Recalling the original tweet, he told the I Had Trials Once Podcast: "I think he was playing for England and he was so flipping soft. "I can't remember who he played against, might have been flipping Zlatan [Ibrahimovic] or somebody, I can't remember who it was but he got battered. "I was like, he's a target man's dream. Technically he's unbelievable like, so good. I just tweeted going 'you'd love to play against him because you'd just batter him'. "You're not being derogatory about him because he never gives the ball away, he's unbelievable on the ball, but if you're getting balls in and going long you want John Stones over flipping [Virgil] van Dijk marking you don't you? " Since their FA Cup meeting, Stones has gone on to win four Premier League titles and a Champions League, as well as reaching two Euro finals with England. Pope, meanwhile, left Port Vale in 2021 and has been in non-league ever since. When Stones' recent success was put to him, Pope revealed the defender had told him to ‘f*** off’ at the FA Cup game after Raheem Sterling and Benjamin Mendy persuaded him to go and say hello. “Yeah, he's just an absolute s***bag, ” he said. “Because you go in their dressing room. .. I didn't go in, I was the only one who stayed in our dressing room. "Everybody else after the game came in and had pictures and that. And I just stayed in there, I was in there for about 15 minutes. "And then Sterling and Mendy came in, 'get in here, we've hammered him for f***ing months over your tweet, the group chat's been f***ing mayhem'. "I'm like 'I'm not coming in', they literally dragged me, I'm going 'I'm not coming in'. "And then in the end they go, 'come on please, just come in'. So I walked in and they're like 'he's here! ' "And Stones went 'oh f*** off, no, no'. I went 'you f***ing s***bag you'. "I said 'you've let a pub player f***ing get in your head that much? Are you alright, you'? "All the money you've got, you're at Man City and you've let that affect you? "He wouldn't even look at me. I said 'can I have your shirt? ' He said 'No, f***off. ' "He wouldn't speak to me. " Pope, now 39, currently plays for Premier League Division One West club Kidsgrove Athletic in Staffordshire. This service is provided on talk SPORT Ltd's Terms of Use in accordance with our Privacy Policy.