Di Canio talked to his legs!
PAULO WANCHOPE ON CUTTING UNITED TO RIBBONS AND HIS CRAZY TIME AT WEST HAM
WHEN Peter Schmeichel and Paulo Wanchope eventually became team-mates at Manchester City, the pair developed a running joke in the dressing room.
Wanchope recalls: ‘Whenever we talked about that goal, Schmeichel said to me, “I made you famous because I let you score that one”.’
The goal in question, of course, is Wanchope’s dazzling strike at Old Trafford, on the day he made his bow in English football for Derby County in a famous 3-2 victory. As part of Derby’s 125th anniversary celebrations in 2009, the club’s supporters voted Wanchope’s goal as the greatest in their history.
Wanchope cut Manchester United to ribbons, sauntering past Nicky Butt on halfway, weaving infield with the ball glued to those telescopic legs, striding by Phil Neville and holding off Gary Pallister before stroking the ball low and beyond Peter Schmeichel and into the goal.
‘It was more than a goal,’ Wanchope tells Sportsmail ahead of tomorrow’s FA Cup clash between the two teams. ‘Nobody knew who this Paulo Wanchope was from Costa Rica. They said, “Do they even play football in Costa Rica?” After that, people took notice and started to respect me and the country.’
Wanchope, who rejected a basketball scholarship in the United States to pursue his football dreams, arrived at Derby in spring 1997. He had previously encountered setbacks. ‘I had a two-week trial at QPR. I scored six goals in three games but they said no. It was a shock. But then Derby came calling.’
Six months into his time at Derby, Jim Smith described Wanchope, then 21, as ‘the brightest prospect for his age that I’ve handled in 25 years as a manager’.
At his best, Wanchope demonstrated the best of cosmopolitan Premier League football in the Nineties. He was gangly and unpredictable, capable of veering from the exquisite to the absurd in an instant. The manager went above and beyond to help his forward through his Old Trafford debut.
‘I barely slept the night before the game,’ says Wanchope. ‘I was twisting and turning, waking up every other hour. I wanted time to go faster so I could be out there on the pitch.
‘We were on the way to Old Trafford on the bus. Then Jim sidled up to me and asked what kind of music I like. I said salsa. So he had my salsa music blaring out to the whole bus. Everyone was singing along. It relaxed me and made me feel as though we were back home.’
Wanchope and Smith had a productive, albeit occasionally fiery relationship. After substituting Wanchope in a 1-0 defeat at Barnsley, Smith accused the Costa Rican of ‘flouncing off the pitch like an actor’.
‘A lot of things happened in that dressing room,’ says Wanchope. ‘I liked to play with the outside of my boot or try crazy things and he went mad at half-time in games — throwing stuff, shouting ...but he made me more effective. I felt I had to prove myself every day.’
After scoring 23 goals in 72 Premier League games for Derby, Wanchope joined West Ham for £3.5million in 1999. He scored 12 goals in a team featuring Paolo Di Canio and the emerging talents of Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Frank Lampard and Michael Carrick.
‘That was some squad,’ he says. ‘Those kids had a great mentality. Ferdinand and Lampard always did extra work. Frank worked hard on his agility. I remember noticing that he was always doing something more in the gym every day. It is those little details that set those players up for life.’
And then there was Di Canio. ‘Passionate, crazy . . . on the day of the game, his mood was very serious and crazy. He sat in the dressing room before games and started talking to his legs. He was in the zone, concentrating, telling his legs they need to be prepared, they needed to do this or do that. I was on the bench when he scored his volley against Wimbledon. Wow! He did that kind of thing in training every day.’
At Manchester City, Wanchope became a terrace hero but he was beset by injury troubles. The latter stages of his career took him to Spain, Qatar, Argentina, Japan and the United States.
In his home country, Wanchope has hero status after scoring 45 goals in 73 international appearances, including two goals in a 4-2 defeat by Germany at the 2006 World Cup.
He was Costa Rica’s assistant manager at the 2014 World Cup, as they topped the group ahead of Uruguay, Italy and England, eventually going out on penalties to Holland in the quarter-finals.
He became head coach but resigned after six-and-a-half months following a brawl with a security guard during an Under 23 match in Panama. Footage went viral and the steward did seem the more vicious aggressor.
‘There were two ways back to the dressing room,’ he says, ‘through the pitch or out of the stadium. I tried to go through the gate and he didn’t let me go. I tried to force myself in and explain to him. Everything started from there.
‘He went crazy, I didn’t want to fight him. I resigned because it wasn’t good behaviour from that man but I was the national team coach and I wanted to apologise to the fans and the public.
Wanchope, 41, is completing his coaching qualifications in England and says it would be amazing to return there as coach.
If his teams share the same sense of adventure he exhibited as a player, Wanchope will not be short of admirers.