What started as a heated exchange during a small-sided game against Manchester United reserves escalated into one of the most bizarre incidents in recent Premier League history: Idrissa Gana Gueye slapped Michael Keane across the face. The referee, only ten yards away, had no choice but to send the Senegalese midfielder off with a straight red card. Keane stood stunned, hand on cheek, while the travelling United fans roared with laughter. Social media exploded. “Everton civil war”, “Keane vs Gueye PPV when?”, “Dyche out” trended within minutes.

Yet three weeks later, both players were laughing together in the tunnel before the Merseyside derby, arms around each other like nothing had happened. No fines were leaked, no “club handling the matter internally” statements lasted more than 48 hours, and both started against Liverpool. So how on earth did Everton turn outright humiliation into genuine reconciliation so quickly? The answer is equal parts brutal, brilliant, and completely bonkers.

It started the morning after the red card. David Moyes (yes, the same man who once managed both players a decade apart) was brought in as a neutral “peacemaker” by the club’s hierarchy. But this was no soft-touch sit-down with tea and biscuits. Sources inside Finch Farm say the first thing Moyes did was lock Gueye and Keane in the club’s old boot room (literally padlocked from the outside) with nothing but a whiteboard, two markers, and a single instruction written in capital letters: “WRITE 50 THINGS YOU ACTUALLY LIKE ABOUT EACH OTHER. YOU’RE NOT LEAVING UNTIL IT’S DONE.”

Three hours later, the list was finished. Among the entries still talked about in the dressing room today: Keane wrote “Gana’s slide tackles make me feel safe enough to step ten yards higher”, while Gueye admitted “Keane’s aerial duels mean I never have to jump, I can just run, love that”. Staff apparently heard laughter through the door after the second hour. The ice was broken.

But Everton weren’t finished. Step two was what players now simply call “The Gauntlet”.

For the entire next week, Gueye and Keane were not allowed to speak to anyone else in the squad unless they first spoke to each other. Need to ask the kit man for shinpads? Only after checking with your new best friend. Want extra portions at dinner? Ask your partner first. Even the media team got involved: every single interview request for either player was rejected unless they did it together. The club’s TikTok account suddenly featured the pair doing cringeworthy “best mates” challenges (guess the teammate from the baby photo, dance to Sean Dyche’s favourite songs, the lot). The comments went from venom to “this is weirdly wholesome” in 48 hours.

The masterstroke, however, came from the manager himself. Sean Dyche, known for his no-nonsense style, announced in the next pre-match press conference that Gueye and Keane would be roommates on the next away trip (something that had literally never happened before). Not only that, they would share a room for every away game until further notice. “Actions have consequences,” Dyche deadpanned to the press. “Sometimes the consequence is having to listen to Michael’s snoring for 38 nights a year.”

What nobody expected was that the two actually bonded. Keane, the quiet Scouser-by-adoption, discovered Gueye’s ridiculous PlayStation skills. Gueye found out Keane secretly loves 90s Britpop and can quote entire Oasis interviews. By the time they checked into the team hotel before the Manchester City game, they were finishing each other’s sentences in the mixed zone.

The final piece of the puzzle was perhaps the most Everton thing imaginable: community service, but make it personal.

The club arranged for Gueye and Keane to coach a group of 12-year-old boys from a tough part of Liverpool for an entire Saturday. The catch? The kids already knew everything about the slap. They spent the first twenty minutes asking for replays on their phones and trying to recreate the incident. Instead of shutting it down, the coaches let the boys get it out of their system, then turned it into a lesson: “We were idiots. This is what happens when you lose your head. Don’t be like us.”

By the end of the session, one of the kids asked both players to sign the same ball (right next to each other). Gueye and Keane looked at each other, shrugged, and wrote: “From your favourite idiots, Gana & Keano”. A photo of that ball now hangs in the academy corridor at Finch Farm.

Three months on, the stats tell their own story. Everton have kept six clean sheets in the eleven games both have started together since the incident (their best defensive run in four years). Keane’s pass completion is up 9%, Gueye’s tackles won per 90 are at a career high. Opponents say the two communicate constantly now, something that was noticeably missing before the slap.

Club insiders say the reconciliation has become a blueprint. When two youngsters had a shoving match in training last month, Dyche simply pointed at the boot room door and said, “Fifty things. Go.” They were out in 45 minutes.

Everton never released an official statement about the punishment. They didn’t need to. The results spoke louder than any PR spin ever could. From viral embarrassment to the tightest central midfield-defensive partnership in the league in less than a month.

Sometimes the best way to fix a broken relationship isn’t an apology on Instagram or a slapped wrist fine. Sometimes all it takes is locking two grown men in a room until they remember they actually quite like each other, then forcing them to live together until they can’t imagine it any other way.

And if that doesn’t work? There’s always the boot room again.