Caniggia is back in town to relive Dens Park dream

They say there’s no gain without pain. This was inarguably true in the strange case of Dundee signing Claudio Caniggia, who returns to the city tonight.

Sadly for Fabian Caballero, he was the one who had to suffer in order to start a chain of events that led to the unlikely sight of Caniggia, Diego Maradona’s former strike partner and a world star in his own right, posing with thumbs up in a Dundee shirt in October 2000.

Caballero was proving the jewel among new manager Ivano Bonetti’s summer signings. But when he sustained a serious knee injury it left Dundee short of a striker. Few imagined they could tempt Caniggia, even if the player had fallen on harder times. A return to Atalanta, by then in Serie B, had not worked out and he scored just once.

“Because we had a relationship with him in Italy, it meant we had a chance to bring Claudio to Dundee,” recalled Bonetti yesterday. While Ivano never played with the striker, Dario, his brother and assistant manager, had – at Hellas Verona in the late 1980s.

Caniggia was still to explode on the public consciousness in Britain. He did so at the 1990 World Cup, scoring in the semifinal against Italy. It was another decade before he landed in Dundee but he did not disappoint those who remembered him chiefly from this era. Steven Tweed, the former Dundee centre-half, remembers someone who mixed easily with others at Dens Park. “He was especially good with the young players,” Tweed recalled. The 33-year-old Caniggia scored seven times in 25 appearances before continuing his Indian summer with Rangers.

“He used to go for a crafty fag at half-time,” Tweed added. “He’d take the filter off, smoke it and then also have sugar cube. After that you’d just watch him go – he was like a race horse!”

● Claudio Caniggia will be speaking about his time at Dundee at an event at the Whitehall Theatre in the city tonight. Tickets are still on sale via Cc33.eventbrite.co.uk