Saturday,
November 29, 2008
Antonio Cassano Writes of His Tempestuous
Fabio Capello Relationship
The
ANNOTICO Report
Trying
to explain the relationship between Star Player Antonio Cassano and Coach Fabio
Capello is unusually complicated, maybe even bizarre
Mimic Who fell Foul of Capello
The Sunday Times
Ian Hawkey
November 23, 2008
FABIO CAPELLO
threw one of his angry fits in
Just as English
football rolls out a red carpet for Capello after a
successful year in charge of the national team, Cassano, the enfant terrible
of Italian football, has been raking over the cinders of perhaps the most
tempestuous relationship Capello the coach has had
with a player. Cassano and Capello were together
twice, at Roma and at Real Madrid, and in that time, Cassano estimates, they
told one another to f*** off at least 20 times. At Roma, whom
Cassano joined as a teenager from a poor, sometimes dangerous background in the
southern Italian city of
For all this,
Cassano describes the manager as like a father to me. I miss him. If its a fact that
he pushed me out at Madrid and left me out of the team from time to time at
Roma, he was true to me in that when I was playing well he picked me and he was
almost always right. Sometimes he was brave, selecting me ahead of great
strikers like Gabriel Batistuta. Hes always
said too that the best players he has coached in his career were me and [
Cassanos
autobiography hit the bookshops in Italy this weekend and in between the
tales of fast cars and faster women Cassano claims to have known 600 to
700 intimately, which is quite something for a squat young man with
bad skin and a tendency to plumpness around the midriff is yarn after yarn about his spats and
rapprochements with Capello. If the absence of a
father figure is a feature of his rough childhood, his relationship with Don
Fabio is described again and again as like father and son. Of
their first acquaintance, when Capello rang Cassano
in anticipation of their working together in
Soon enough, they
would be falling out. I loved him like a father and I hated the
bastard, recalls Cassano. I looked on him as the source of all
truth, and then thought [he] was about as genuine as a 3 coin. We couldnt agree on anything. He would stress the
importance of order and discipline, Id tell him
the reasons for disorder and indiscipline. I started doing the opposite of what
he said. In time, others at Roma would think Capello
too indulgent of his talented, incorrigible protigi.
Some of Cassanos stories support the idea.
In one run of
good form, Cassano decided he wanted to break a corner flag while celebrating a
goal. He told Capello of his plan. If we win,
you can do it, said the coach. If you score two and we win, then you
can break all four as far as Im concerned. Capello
once told this reporter he felt it a privilege to work with a footballer so
gifted.
At
The alliance
lasted less than a month. Dropped by the manager, then ignored by him after
Spanish television broadcast Cassanos vivid impression of his boss,
performed in front of other, giggling players before a match in Barcelona,
Cassano felt he had become, to Capello, a
malignant cancer, so that anybody with me would be considered an enemy to him. Like David Beckham, for example. When we were in front of
the coach I pretended to hardly know Beckham, in case that made his life more
difficult.
Cassano still
feels wronged by Capello for not having given me
an explanation of why he was frozen out at
Last summer
THE ITALIAN
GAZZA
Public tears, a
brittle temper and a reckless sense of mischief; you can see why Antonio
Cassano is seen as the Paul Gascoigne of modern Italian football. Some of
his appetites, though, surpass even those of the weeping Geordie. Cassano
claims in his autobiography to have slept with more than 600 women and hes
still only 26
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