After Di Canio, it's due diligence from here on in

by Bryan Cooney
 
EARLIER this week, a quixotic Texan called Ellis Short declared time on a volatile Italian called Paolo Di Canio. Sunderland’s carbolic soap opera had ended.

That the opera lasted only a few days short of six months was in itself a genuine surprise. Most people possessing logical football minds wondered why the hell it had been put into production in the first place.

Let’s concentrate initially on the Di Canio factor. The dramatic content in his life has always been such that it would be easy to visualise him in regular collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

His managerial engagement at the Stadium of Light evolved into a riot of cussedness, craziness and confrontation. Single-handedly, he attempted to destroy the theory that millionaire footballers are blessed with omnipotence.

But, by insulting them publicly and thus humiliating them, he took on the Mackem world in a catch-weight and un-winnable contest.

So, how could one man thrust himself into so many improbable and foolhardy situations? A small yet crucial part of the answer can be found by reverting to his one season with Celtic.

Having burned a veritable armada of boats in Italy (he played for Lazio, Ternana, Juventus, Napoli and AC Milan and tested the temperaments of managers such as Giovanni Trapattoni and Fabio Capello), he came to Britain in 1996. He became a short-term hero, not only one of the pioneers of the Fergus McCann revolution, but also a particular favourite of the then manager, Tommy Burns.

Burns, of course, was biased. Fifteen goals in 37 outings provided a foundation for that bias. His player, proud owner of the washboard stomach, was all about towering standards. Paolo, playing the role of the comprehensive professional, gave everything of himself and demanded everything from those around him. Celtic prospered and so did the player. He was refreshed and reinvigorated and ready to try his luck in England with first Sheffield Wednesday and then West Ham.

There had been, however, troubling signs of deficit in Glasgow. It seemed this man possessed an innate capacity for causing chaos if not on the park then off it. Never more so on a Thursday evening when the rain was pummelling the city with an almost unnatural ferocity.

Andy Ritchie, a scout who assisted in taking the player to Celtic Park, received a phone call from a man who sounded as if someone had applied a blowtorch to his backside. Di Canio summoned him to his house immediately.

Ritchie consulted his watch. It was 11.20p.m. He didn’t wish to waste time asking any further questions. But that didn’t stop his mind engaging overdrive. God Forbid, had something happened to Di Canio’s wife…or his family? He jumped into his career and broke speed records to reach the player’s home.

Thankfully, the emergency services were not required: there was no illness, no injury, no authentic trauma. No actual crisis, either. Di Canio pointed out a set of dirty windows that hadn’t been cleaned for a fortnight. The thought of being unable to see clearly was driving him to distraction.

But why had the panic button been punched at such an ungodly hour? Only Paolo could explain such a conundrum. There would be no explanation, however. Paolo doesn’t do explanations for eccentric behaviour.

The memories still live with Ritchie. “I remember being tipped off by a guy from Juventus. He said Paolo would be fantastico for Celtic as long as we treated Paolo double fantastico. And that we did. But sometimes things went above and beyond the call of duty. Look, I liked Paolo, but sometimes he was hard work.

“He set himself high standards, but he was a very self centred person who never really gave me the impression that he could be a leader of men. He was someone the fans would love…but the chairmen would hate.”

This anecdote brings us back to Ellis Short. We know rather less about him than we do about his former manager. What we know is that he is the owner of Sunderland FC and proprietor of Skibo Castle - Andrew Carnegie’s creation in the Scottish Highlands. He is also said to thrive on anonymity.

Apparently, he’s an expert in private equities and can provide personal funds of nearly two billion dollars -  a fraction of which was splurged in the close season when 14 new players were recruited to bolster the Di Canio regime.

Expertise in business doesn't transfer easily to expertise in football matters, however. Short, remember, had sacked Martin O’Neill after Sunderland became unfamiliar with the art of winning football matches. He needed someone to send a jolt of electricity into flagging, perhaps recalcitrant, bodies.

Di Canio was chosen to provide the necessary energy surge. And he assuredly did in those last few weeks of the season when the club held onto their blue chip status by the narrowest of margins. But, come on, consult your wildest dreams: did this form the basis for a long-term arrangement?

Look, many chairmen, blessed with business brilliance, are flummoxed by the idiosyncratic nature of the beautiful game. They take over clubs and almost immediately seem to forfeit their wits. Did Ellis perform due diligence? Did he peer into the Di Canio cupboard and risk disturbing any skeletons? Did he not recognise the unpredictable, enigmatic ways of the man? Apparently not. Incredibly not.

At the time, Di Canio had registered some managerial success with Swindon Town, but his methods were unconventional, to say the least. To become a success in the Premier League, the imperative is to alter the management psyche. Di Canio was not prepared to do that. Perhaps he was not capable of adjusting that Latin temperament to a more moderate setting; he needed to reason rather than rant.

But Di Canio is not the authentic culprit here. It is Short who should be humbled by the experience. Embarrassed even. But billionaires don’t embarrass easily. There are already signs that he has not learned from this costly experience. According to one newspaper, he has asked the players - yes, the same ones who complained about the Di Canio management style - who they would prefer to lead them. This mind is boggling already.

Meanwhile, it’s onwards and hopefully upwards for a quixotic Texan and his football club. Due diligence at all times, of course. If only…

 

A summer of sunshine and smiles slides inexorably towards a winter of discontent

By Jim Black

THINGS are bad in the media business, but perhaps they have not quite reached the stage of journalists bedding down at the local Salvation Army hostel when on assignment.

According to Phil Goodlad, that irrepressible BBC sports broadcaster whose boundless enthusiasm betrays an as yet unsullied view of life inevitably born of long developed cynicism in the case of those of us of a certain vintage, I found myself residing at such an establishment while reporting on the recent Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles.

While not wishing to in any way denigrate the fine work down by the Salvationists, I would like to make it clear that was most certainly not the case.

The misunderstanding arose from a conversation I had with the man from Stornoway, who gives the impression of being double-jointed the way he delightfully twists into camera shot from almost any angle.

“I’m staying at the Sally in Perth,” I informed the good Goodlad in response to his enquiry.

I should explain that the Sally is the commonly used abbreviation for the Salutation Hotel, apparently Scotland’s oldest such establishment. However, my friend the rubber man was clearly ignorant of the fact, which explained his rather sheepish approach the following day.

“Jim, I have a confession to make,” he announced, and as I am not a member of the priesthood I quickly realised that he had not approached me on religious grounds.

“I happened to be speaking to Euan McLean (another member of Scotland’s golf writing fraternity) and expressed my sympathy that due to a chronic shortage of accommodation in the area you had been forced to bed down with the Sally Army” he informed me.

While I found his confession highly amusing, I was left to ponder the esteem in which I am held by at least one of my colleagues.

Suffice to say, when Iain King, the Scottish Sun’s head of sport, informs me that it’s the Sally Army or second hand camper van, my days as a golf writer will be over.

Hopefully that is still some way off, for the thought of a summer without reporting on golf fills me with dread.

Having spent most of the past four months on the road covering tournaments from Wentworth to Dublin, Muirfield to Celtic Manor, I am becoming increasingly apprehensive about what lies ahead for me in the sporting fields.

While I am sustained by thoughts of the Dunhill Links Championship and Ricky Burns’ forthcoming world lightweight title defence, there is also the rapidly growing realisation that most weekends from now on will involve the coverage of Scottish Premiership football.

There was a time when I relished such a prospect. But with the passing of the years has also come growing irritation at the way I and others in the profession are treated by the football world as a whole.

We are regularly subjected to a mix of rudeness, dismissiveness, arrogant disregard and, in certain cases, utter contempt while helping publicise a game that would appear to be in terminal decline.

Rather than embrace the media and work with newspapers in an effort to breathe fresh life into the patient, employees of football clubs would apparently rather further the absurd notion that they are dealing with the “enemy.”

Not all are the same, just the majority. Never mind that work facilities are in many cases completely inadequate, the attitude of the average “football man” towards the media is often both aggressive and disrespectful in the event that any form of justifiable criticism is aimed in their direction.

Do I really care anymore? Deep down, probably not, given that my days of having to endure sub-zero temperatures in cramped press boxes and snarled responses to awkward questions are drawing ever closer to an end.

But a word of advice to the afflicted before I toddle off into the sunset. Take a look at the world of golf and how the European Tour, for example, treats the scribes.

State of the art press rooms, more often than not a plentiful supply of food, an almost instant transcription service, a wealth of information readily to hand and a team of press officers trained to cater for our almost every whim – and, most important of all, in my humble opinion, the game’s stars threatened with disciplinary action in the event that they decline to attend a press conference without first offering a plausible excuse for not doing so.

Oh, I almost forgot. Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player et all invariably willing and seemingly perfectly happy to grant interviews.

Of course I’m talking true legends of sport as opposed to often overpaid, sometimes overbearing and occasionally overhyped footballers who take a lead from the manager in regarding the media with suspicion.

There have been times when that deep-rooted mistrust has been fully justified as a consequence of underhand, unprofessional behaviour on the part of some members of the journalistic profession.

But, “the enemy?” I think not. At least not his gnarled old hack who remains as passionate about sport as he ever did, albeit not with the same blind acceptance of bad manners, shoddy treatment and attempts at intimidation that he once tolerated without comment or complaint.

Plucked from a Gambling Hell

By Bryan Cooney

　

THE new Scottish football season has barely tied the laces of its new, streamlined boots and yet finds itself experiencing a siege situation. The ominous shadow of gambling has fallen across us again.

There are many questions to answer. Has the normally somnambulant SFA, for instance, woken from a stupor and gone uncomfortably over the top in its pursuit of Rangers star Ian Black?

The latter, I would remind you if you need any reminding, must answer charges of betting against his teams and, in many eyes, has assumed pariah status. Has the governing body been right to name him at this early juncture ?

Is former footballer Kevin Twaddle exaggerating when he says that the betting bug has turned into a virus ? Or is this only the tip of an iceberg that could sink ten Titanics?

There again, can we blame players for punting when the encouragement for doing so is all around us 24-7? You are almost programmed to gamble these days, after all. So, where is our caring Government hereabouts? Wasn’t it only yesterday that the Labour lot were advocating the opening of giant casinos to assist us with our leisure time?

In fairness, let’s put such hypocrisies aside and wait until next month’s Hampden hearing before any conclusions are drawn.. All I know is that I feel great compassion for anyone whose life is governed by gambling. Bitter experience insists that it draws you in with all the efficiency of a wanton woman - and spits you out with the haste of a vindictive one.

Most of us, I’m sure, are in favour of instant reward. I remember my own instincts being sharpened in a smoke-filled, subterranean room in an Aberdeen backstreet. One evening, circa 1964, at 19 years of age, this apprentice sports journalist initially experienced the vicarious buzz of being a winner.

Having shipped a considerable cargo of ale, I tumbled into the Belmont

Club. It looked, at first glance, as if the local prison had agreed an amnesty. Intoxication, however, ensured that I didn’t give a damn who was there. I eventually secured a seat at a packed chemin-de-fer table and opened my account with a ten bob note.

For those unfamiliar with the process, chemmy is a card game whereby you take the bank and proceed to draw two cards against the two cards of the person who has challenged your right to be banker. If your cards add up to eight or nine, you turn them over for victory. If not, you draw another card in attempt to get the highest score. A face card counts as zero. You can either draw your winnings or let them accumulate, whatever your fancy.

Anyway, Lady Luck was my very special companion that night. On my first attempt at the bank, she saw to it that I won ten times on the trot. By the time my turn came round again, the envious eyes of all the Belmont Club were on me. I had become everybody’s friend and could scarcely breathe for people breathing down my neck - people, I may point out, whom you would not take home to mother for afternoon tea and crumpets.

I embarked on another glorious winning run and, when it ended, was attempting to add up the bounty. I needn’t have bothered. The resident mathematician, who made it is business to known how the dosh was being distributed, had completed the calculations. “You have exactly one hundred and eighty pounds,” he offered.

At which point, commonsense kicked in. I figured I would never make £180 from a ten-bob starter again. I was taking home circa £9 a week back then. It was time to go home, by ordered taxi, of course. There were too many dark alleyways and cobblestones around Belmont Street to chance an early-morning stroll. Besides, Craiginches Prison was enjoying an amnesty, wasn’t it?

It would be nice to report that this was my first and last visit to the Belmont Club. Or else to say that it led to a rapid expansion of my private wealth. Unhappily, like most mug punters, neither was the case. The narcotic proved immediately addictive. I found I was drawn back there repeatedly as if someone was employing a giant magnet to guide me in. Triumphant repeats, however, were not to be part of the subsequent agenda, But, by then, I was gripped in a particularly sensitive area by the wicked lady of gambling: and, there was no denying it, she was beginning to do my bollocks in.

The unhealthy obsession multiplied. Everything seemed to have my name on it: horse racing, greyhound racing, clandestine card games in the bowels of my place of work: the Aberdeen Press Journal; challenge snooker matches for half crown and dollar stakes at the local Burroughes and Watts snooker centre. If it seemingly moved, I wanted a bet on the outcome. And I’d do anything to sustain the habit: lie, cheat, steal, pawn my possessions. I was familiar with my own crime sheet. I didn’t need a Jeremy Kyle figure to tell me I was a disgrace to the human race.

One day, I realised if I didn’t do something desperate, I’d resort to the ultimate form of desperation. Suicide seemed an appropriate alternative to a life teetering on the razor edge. Thankfully, commonsense prevailed and I transported my desolation to my father. This was by no means the easier option. This was the father who’d always inhabited a distant planet, the father who refrained from overt displays of affection, the father whom I believed was so fixated by his books and his garden that he didn’t have time for me.

I told him everything and, figuratively, curled up into a protective ball, waiting for the explosion of anger and derision. There was none. Instead, there was tolerance and understanding. And also revelation. He told me that at one time he, too, had been overly fond of a bet and that if it hadn't been for the poverty-stricken circumstances of his youth, he, too, might have found himself in my position.

Most important, he offered an alternative. ‘Look,' he said, ‘you get paid of a Friday night, don't you? Okay, from now on, I'll come down to Broad Street on a Friday night and you'll hand your pay packet over to me. That way, (some of) the temptation will be removed. It'll be all down to your willpower after that. But, just consider this, I'm an old man, not in the best of health, either. If I go out of my way to do this for you, whatever else you do, please don't let me down.' 　

It became a Friday night ritual. My father, my undemonstrative, non-tactile yet caring father, would appear, around 6.30p.m. Even with his health deteriorating, he never missed an appointment with a dissolute son. In the side alleyway of the newspaper office. I'd open the brown pay packet, extract enough for a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of beer, and hand the rest to him. Willpower can be an extraordinary force. Somehow, I religiously kept my promise not to gamble, staying away from clubs and bookies' offices as if they were plague-ridden and would contaminate me.

Whenever temptation arose, I thought of the man who, in what would be the last, precious years of his life, was devoted to the correction of misspent youth. In essence, it was easy. If he could make the effort, then I would be strong and make the effort, too. I vowed there would be no going back, no return to the madness.

Today, as far as gambling is concerned, the straight and narrow is a precious place for me. I’m not being sanctimonious when I say that. I shiver when I remember the past and really feel for those who cannot find the postal code of that precious place. Thank God I had someone to show me the way. Some men are anxious to make sportsmen their role models. But life’s most authentic role models often are to be found far closer to home. I know mine was…

*Adapted from Fingerprints of a Football Rascal.