Raymond van Barneveld and Phil Taylor played a legendary World Championship final in 2007. Barney' captured his first and only PDC world title there.
However, it almost didn't come to that. "At a 3-0 deficit in sets, my then manager Ed van der Veer came to the stage and called out to me: 'Come on Ray, you can do it'. Taylor had heard that too and shouted a an ugly comment, I don't even want to repeat it. It did give me the motivation to keep fighting and in the end I was able to reverse the deficit and win 7-6," Van Barneveld said on the podcast Everybody Loves Darts.
Respect
Van Barneveld and Taylor were nonetheless good friends at the time. "There has always been a very big form of respect between us. But now I don't hear from him that much, I'm not a caller anyway. Occasionally we still send each other a message," Van Barneveld concluded.