The big interview: Paolo Di Canio, 'I tell my players - don’t be stupid like I was'

With tensions between referees and teams in the spotlight, the Italian at the centre of one of British football’s most infamous moments talks of the importance of everyone keeping their cool
31 October 2012

Paolo Di Canio is an unlikely football missionary, particularly when it comes to preaching about good behaviour on the pitch.

After all, this is the player who, in his second season in England in 1998, pushed referee Paul Alcock to the ground at Hillsborough after being shown a red card. He was banned for 11 matches.

We are meeting at Swindon’s County Ground barely 24 hours after another high-profile bust-up between players and the referee at Stamford Bridge and the Italian is convinced he can use his own experiences to make sure his players behave.

“If they come to me, I can say to them, ‘I can help you because I was stupid, I was wrong. Do you want to be stupid like me? I made a lot of mistakes. I missed chances to become a better, more effective player. Lads do not do this.’”

Not that he has ever had to lecture any of his lads. With pride he tells me: “In the last year we did not have one player sent off for using bad words or blaming the referee.”

It is the referee, though, who is in the spotlight following the match between Chelsea and Manchester United on Sunday, when Mark Clattenburg is alleged to have racially abused John Obi Mikel and called Juan Mata a “Spanish t**t”.

Di Canio says: “If you tell me it happened for sure, it is no good. The referee is the man who has to respect the rules. How can he blame the players and make some very bad comments? He cannot go there.”

However, talking generally, the former striker says that officials are under immense strain and that is often because of the players.

“I know referees are under very high pressure,” he says before adding with a smile. “In the past, only Di Canio used to go round the referee and protest.”

Then, growing serious, he continues: “Unfortunately, now in modern football, even for simple throw-ins six, seven players go round the referee and are using words. I understand the pressure but they have to remain good, to be cool, to be strong. It is not easy.”

Di Canio believes it is important that the authorities crackdown on swearing in football. “In the new generation, saying a bad word that 20 years earlier would be punished heavily is now normal. It is not normal and we have to stop it in sport and general life. We should be careful.”

This is a reference to the well-recorded exchanges between John Terry and Anton Ferdinand which saw Terry banned for four matches for racially abusing Ferdinand. Terry’s punishment came nine months after Liverpool’s Luis Suarez was given an eight-game ban for racially abusing Patrice Evra. Di Canio says: “You cannot imagine John Terry or Luis Suarez to be racist. Otherwise they would not play with other black guys. You should speak to Ashley Cole. If Terry is racist, how can he play next to Ashley Cole who made a comment in his favour? To claim they are racist is too much.

“Their action, probably under pressure, was made to damage their opponents on the field. That is wrong. But you cannot claim they are racist. Their behaviour in life speaks for them. Did they have any problems in the past as racist people? No. They made stupid comments, used words that go in a racist direction, not that they are racist. It is important to make the distinction. It is obvious they have to be punished and they were. The judgement was right. But the situation should have been sorted out without waiting some 10 months.”

But can Di Canio really comment on such issues when, in his autobiography, he praised the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini as “basically a very principled, ethical individual” who had been “deeply misunderstood”?

This clearly touches a raw nerve in the former Lazio player and he says sharply: “You have to read the story to understand. People claim to be communist who don’t follow exactly what the communist regime in Russia under Stalin did. I don’t take everything from one regime. I am talking of leadership. It is in my book. I don’t say I want fascism. These ideas, they begin to help people, the pensioners, to make new schools, build new cities for the people. That was good at the beginning. Then, at the end, everything went wrong for many reasons. I don’t want go through it now because I am not a political person. I have friends who are black, Jewish. My life speaks for me.”

As far as Di Canio is concerned, his is a life made not by what he may have said about a long-dead dictator but by his parents as he grew up in a working class area of Rome. There his brickie father brought up a family of four boys on £250 a month. And, when Di Canio was 25, he was slapped by him at the family dining table for being rude to his mother.

“It made me the man I am. That moment gave me the chance to ­understand respect, the tradition, the rules. I was married with a daughter but that was no reason to be rude to my mother. I was angry because I did not have a chance to play for the national team [in the 1994 World Cup]. For this reason I answered badly to my mum. It was a stupid, stupid reaction. Because you think you are a footballer, that does not mean anything. You remain the same person as before. My dad gave me a chance to think, ‘where am I going?’”

Di Canio may be over-egging the incident at the Rome dining table. His push against Alcock came four years after his father supposedly taught him respect. But what is undeniable is that the 44-year-old has found a pair of managers, who like his parents, are his inspiration: the man who led England, Fabio Capello, and the man who hoped to be his successor, Harry Redknapp.

“Capello, obviously, more as a coach when I played under him for AC Milan. Harry for the motivation he gave to his players with his body language which was very good. As a manager, Harry was very intelligent. He knows how to handle a dressing room.

“For people like me who come from the sewer, he knows how to persuade you in some ways and encourage you in other ways. He is clever. The mix of the two is the perfect mix to be a very good manager. But I don’t try to imitate either Capello or Harry Redknapp.”

It was Redknapp who brought Di Canio to Upton Park from Sheffield Wednesday in 1999. And he can still drool about the goal he scored at Old Trafford that knocked United out of the 2001 FA Cup. Repeating his now famous line, he said to me: “To score that winning goal was like having sex with Madonna.”

Getting the Swindon job in May 2011 did not produce quite that sensation although the West Ham ­connection was crucial. The club relegated to League Two could not find a manager when chairman Jeremy Wray was contacted by Di Canio’s ­manager. Wray, a West Ham fan, met

Di Canio expecting to dine out on meeting a Hammers’ legend. He left giving him the managerial reins at the club.

Di Canio, having won promotion last season, did think of leaving Swindon when, earlier this month, Wray was pushed out by the majority shareholder Andrew Black. “For the rest of my life, I will be texting him because he was the first one to show belief in me.”

It is nine years since Di Canio left West Ham but he remains a Hammers fan. His left upper arm has a tattoo of the West Ham badge and he says: “It was an easy decision to have a tattoo because it was one of the best periods of my life. More important, I had the chance to become skipper of one of the most exciting clubs in England.”

And one day he says: “It is my dream to be manager there, maybe in 10 to 20 years’ time. It was a place where I felt like home and I still have a fantastic relationship.”

For the moment, though, Di Canio’s dreams are limited to seeing if he can get another scalp as Swindon play Aston Villa in the fourth round of the Capital One Cup. Since he took charge, in 10 clashes with clubs above them, Swindon have won eight including victories over Wigan and Stoke.

And, should this progress continue, then that is just the CV that will attract other clubs to Di Canio, maybe even the Hammers. Perhaps he will not have to wait 10 years to fulfil his dream.

• Paolo Di Canio was speaking to the Evening Standard on behalf of Capital One, the credit card company and new sponsors of the League Cup. Visit facebook.com/CapitalOneUK

Follow Mihir on Twitter @mihirbose

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