SAINT PAOLO
Paolo Di Canio was never boring at his first three British clubs. Incendiary at Celtic, infamous at Sheffield Wednesday and wonderful at West Ham, the Italian’s imperfections made him a terrace charmer, as he recalls with FFT...
Few players ever told Sir Alex Ferguson to “f** k off” and got away with it. But when the Manchester United manager calls you up on Christmas Day out of the blue, what’s a guy supposed to do? With Paolo Di Canio, though, there’s usually a simple explanation. The Italian required plenty of them in a career littered with hot- headed outbursts and tittersome flashpoints. Yet there was one common thread which ran throughout: the infectious passion which made him a terrace hero no matter where he went in British football, having joined Celtic from Milan for £ 1 million in July 1996.
These days, Di Canio works as a pundit and commentator on Premier League matches for Sky Italia, and lives a quieter life in the Olgiata district of Rome’s countryside. Not that he wouldn’t leap at the chance to return as a manager, mind you, after dugout spells at Swindon and Sunderland. When FFT picks up the phone to let the 53- year- old know of our cult heroes special, he’s all too happy to reminisce on the happiest period of his life.
“Let’s say that my homeland is Italy, but honestly my first football homeland is England,” he beams. “Although I was born here, probably in another life I was English.”
The feelings are mutual, especially at the first two Premier League clubs that Di Canio represented. During six campaigns with Sheffield Wednesday and West Ham, Di Canio’s personality, panache and sporadic ref rage illuminated stadia across the land – but Scotland was first on the receiving end...
“I WANTED TO T AKE HIM...”
Di Canio ended his solitary season at Celtic with the Scotland PFA Player of the Year prize – received in full Highland regalia, naturally – after scoring 15 goals in 37 games. As debut seasons go, it was rather good... if you ignore everything that happened around it.
In a campaign where Rangers collected their ninth consecutive title and won all four Old Firm league encounters for the first time since the Scottish Premiership was formed in 1975, Di Canio frequently flip- flopped from ace to anarchist. For a game- changing debut at Kilmarnock and Yuletide wonder goal at home to Aberdeen, there were also diving accusations and suggestions of a Protestant conspiracy among referees.
It all came to a head against the Gers in March 1997, when the Italian became embroiled in a bitter war of words with Ian Ferguson and, according to the midfielder, “said he was going to break my legs”. Just five months later the prickly Paolo was gone, following fellow objectors Pierre van Hooijdonk and Jorge Cadete out the exit – much to the satisfaction of chairman Fergus Mccann, who’d sarcastically dubbed them the Three Amigos. In his place had already arrived a little- known Swede called Henrik…
How do you look back on your experience at Celtic now?
I went to Scotland with great enthusiasm, because Celtic came from my childhood
when I played Subbuteo with them. They had a very special shirt that you didn’t see much on TV – it had always fascinated me because it was completely different from the standard jerseys, with all those horizontal stripes. Not knowing the Scottish league, my choice was cultural, too – I wanted a life experience, so went with my three- year- old daughter and wife. Especially in those years, Italian players didn’t really go abroad. Years later, I recall my time there with so much joy – you’re lucky to have these experiences, getting well paid for the work you like, but then to do it in such an important place?
The welcome was unbelievable. [ Manager] Tommy Burns was truly an extraordinary person. At first, my wife and I settled into a hotel, but then moved into a house. One day after training, I heard the doorbell ring – it was very cold, I went to open it… and it was Tommy. I didn’t speak any English, but I remember he walked in and sat on the sofa.
I wasn’t used to that kind of thing! In Italy, a coach had never come to my house. We spent an hour talking – or gesturing, really – and he offered us his support. We lived two blocks away, in an area of cottages. “We’re here for anything,” he told me. “Tomorrow, my wife will come around to take your wife shopping.” Immediately, that filled my heart. The Scots are fantastic, warm people.
Can you tell us what happened in that last Old Firm match against Rangers in March?
We lost 1- 0 to Brian Laudrup’s goal. I didn’t score, but I hit the crossbar. It weighed us down, unfortunately. Ian Ferguson provoked me, of course, because of my character and the situation – I wanted to take him! He was the symbolic player of Rangers, the gritty one. I’d scored when we beat them 2- 0 in the cup quarter- finals 10 days earlier, and was the quality player of Celtic with a bit of character. Ferguson had been a fool with some of the other players, then he’d done it a little with me – a foul from behind, pulling the collar of my shirt, trying to provoke me. From that moment, I wanted to go and get him. Then he was mocking our supporters at the end of the game. I even wanted to take him in the dressing room. [ Laughs] It was full of people, though, and they separated us.
How much did you enjoy playing in Old Firm games generally? You got booked in nearly all of them!
I remember it as being incredibly emotional. I’d heard so many stories, but didn’t imagine it could be like it was. The tension, the love, the songs... I was really impressed. We know it goes way beyond football, and this makes everything much stronger: at the stadium you can could feel this positive anger that sometimes became negative outside it.
There was a competitive charge that we players had to pour in, in an intelligent way, on the field. Having been a [ Lazio] fan, I was more sensitive than others about games like that: I appreciate them, admire them, and above all understand their meaning. When you play Rangers, there are no distractions – if my family were there, I would totally forget about them! I was so into it that we warmed up in - 5 degrees and I still didn’t feel the cold, despite being short- sleeved! I thought, ‘ I’m in Scotland, I’m among Celtic’s warriors and I have to put my qualities in’.
Why didn’t you stay there for longer? If you could do it all over again, would you leave in a different way?
I remember the three- hour discussion to negotiate a contract with the chairman who said, “We want you at all costs.” We agreed that at the end of the season, if I did well, we’d renew at the agreed figures and with an extra year. Everything is relative in football, and everybody has their own idea about the performance of a player, but I was voted the best player in Scotland.
Instead, the chairman called my attorney and told him, “Paolo played well, but for us he had to do much more.” I knew something was wrong, so in the end I just said, “Look, it’s better that I leave. I’m sorry because here, for the love and the way I am, I would have stayed for life.” I was 28 – I would have done five or six more seasons there and been fine.
PUSH AND P AUL
Even Di Canio probably wasn’t expecting England to be a bit quieter – he’s perfectly self- aware. And, of course, quiet it was not.
Sheffield Wednesday offered a route to the Premier League in August 1997, completing a part- exchange deal worth £ 4.5m with Dutch wideman Regi Blinker. The striker’s maiden campaign was successful, too: save for a glorious FA Cup red card against Watford – two yellows in the space of seconds, for protesting a throw- in – he wound up as the Owls’ top scorer with 14 goals, one of which came in an outstanding home win against title- chasing Manchester United.
But does anyone outside of Sheffield really remember that? No. There’s only one episode that gets repeated from Di Canio’s tenure at Hillsborough – and it earned him an 11- game ban. It was his final act in South Yorkshire, coming days after he’d called his own boss Danny Wilson “perhaps a little immature”.
His two former Wednesday managers both had their say after the fact. “I’ve managed a few nutters in my time but Paolo takes the biscuit,” said a, er, diplomatic Ron Atkinson. “If I’ve broken up one fight between Paolo and Des Walker, I’ve broken up a hundred.”
The man who’d signed him, meanwhile, David Pleat, merely sighed, “I don’t think
“I KNEW I’D DONE THE BULLS** T THING BY PUSHING THE REF. I’LL ALWAYS REGRET IT”
Paolo was one of those people who wanted to fight and hit people. He just had a kind of theatrical temperament.”
But what fine theatre it was…
Do you remember the weird photoshoot you did with Benito Carbone, both eating pizza on the pitch at Hillsborough ( left)?
[ Laughs] Yes! It was, “You are from Italy! Pizza! We sell that here as well,” from the photographer. After training, Benny and I took a shower and then went to the stadium for this picture. “Pretend to eat it,” he said. The pizza was frozen – they heated it in the microwave, then I got the idea to bite it, but it was crap. So bad. Benny and I had a great relationship. At the beginning, he hosted me – he’d already lived there for a year, so the Italian fantasy couple was formed!
Talk us through pushing over referee Paul Alcock in September 1998. What was going through your head? Some people – Alcock included – said 11 games wasn’t enough...
It was a bad thing, and I’ve always regretted what happened. In the beginning it’s normal that you also blame others, but I realised immediately that it was me who’d done the bulls** t thing. I hadn’t done what some said, though – the sports minister [ Tony Banks] claimed that I was some sort of barbarian who needed to be driven out of England! But those four months out made me think a lot. I didn’t change my character, but I matured. I learned. Sometimes in our game there is competitiveness, and every now and then we give each other a little kick or a push, but we’re not murderers. I was struck by that reaction and could have gone to Spain or Turkey – my wife tried to convince me, but I said, “No, no – I’m staying in England!”
I defended myself with two lawyers from Bologna without the club’s support. I had to pay 50 million Lire out of my own pocket, so then told Wednesday, “I’ll never come back.”
LIFE BEGINS A T THIRTY
What Di Canio needed was a friendly face, someone who could massage his bruised ego and ignore it when required. Sir Alex Ferguson never tried to pretend he treated Eric Cantona the same as everyone else, and that was also the case with West Ham boss Harry Redknapp and his mercurial arrival at the start of 1999.
The vilified Di Canio signed for a cut- price £ 1.5m – risky on a three and a half year deal, not least aged 30, but to his new boss totally