Depends on ones definition of “unprovoked”. I had a close friend in the police, he told me the number of times that fights are reported as unprovoked, then after investigation that’s never the case.
A typical event that can occur is Madine is behaving in an arrogant manner flaunting his wealth in the bar, so this Unitedite gives Madine the eye continuously staring showing his disgust, Madine sees this as provocation and goes over to ask what his problem is, they square up to each other and the Unitedite says im a blade and hate Owls, Madine sees this as an act of provocation so throws the first punch.
One person could say it was an unprovoked atrack, it was GM that walked over to the United fan and GM who threw the first punch. Another person could say the Unitedite was looking for trouble by eyeballing GM making it clear he didn’t like him.
I know from personal experience that the newspapers have no interest in the truth, they want to sell papers so try to create a headline grabbing story without stating factual lies.
So in this case the headline would be “unprovoked attack by a footballer”, that’s what people see then make a judgement without knowing the full facts.
By the way I’m NOT saying this is the case here, no idea as I wasn’t there im saying this type of misleading reporting has occurred many times in the past.