Actor

1968-07-09 · Rome, Italy · Male

1 series in the catalog

Paolo Di Canio (born 9 July 1968) is an Italian former professional footballer and manager. During his playing career he made over 500 league appearances and scored over one hundred goals as a forward. He primarily played as a deep-lying forward, but he could also play as an attacking midfielder, or as a winger. Di Canio was regarded as a technically skilled but temperamental player.

Di Canio began his career in the Italian Serie A, playing for Lazio, Juventus, Napoli and Milan, before a brief spell with the Scottish club Celtic. He subsequently spent seven years in the English Premier League with Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham United and Charlton Athletic. He returned to Italy in 2004, playing for Lazio and Cisco Roma before retiring in 2008. He played for the Italian under-21s, making nine appearances and scoring twice, and was a member of the squad that finished in third place at the 1990 UEFA European Under-21 Championship under manager Cesare Maldini, but was never capped for the senior team.

Among the individual awards he received as a player, Di Canio was named SPFA Players' Player of the Year in 1997 and West Ham's player of the season in 2000. However, his career was at times characterised by controversy: he received an eleven-match ban in 1998 for pushing a referee and attracted negative publicity over his allegiance to fascism.

In 2011, Di Canio entered football management in England with Swindon Town, guiding them in his first full season as manager to promotion to League One. He was appointed as the Sunderland manager at the end of March 2013 but was sacked on 22 September after Sunderland had won only three of thirteen games under his managership.

Early life

Di Canio was born in Rome, in the district of Quarticciolo, a working-class area populated mainly by Roma fans. However, Di Canio was drawn to their local rivals Lazio. As a young boy, he was addicted to cola and similar drinks and called Pallocca, a slang term meaning lard-ball. He was fat and knock-kneed, and needed to wear orthopedic shoes – "But I never hid. My response was to exercise; to try to become the kind of person I am".

Italy

He signed for Lazio in 1985 and remained there until 1990. Lazio won promotion to Serie A in 1988, having narrowly escaped relegation to Serie C1 the year before. He finally made his first-team debut in October 1988 and went on to play 30 games during the 1988–89 season. Di Canio scored the winner in the first Rome derby of the season, a goal which contributed to Lazio's survival in Serie A that season and earning him hero status. In 1990, he was sold to another of Italy's biggest clubs, Juventus; although he won the UEFA Cup with the Turin side in 1993, he struggled to gain playing time during his tenure with the club, because of the presence of other forwards and creative midfielders in the team, such as Roberto Baggio, Salvatore Schillaci, Pierluigi Casiraghi, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Gianluca Vialli and Andreas Möller. He left Juventus after an "animated exchange" with then manager Giovanni Trapattoni and spent the 1993–94 season with Napoli. Two seasons followed at AC Milan, where, despite winning the Serie A title in 1996, he once again struggled to gain playing time because of heavy competition from his teammates, culminating in another row, this time with Fabio Capello.

Celtic

In July 1996, he joined Celtic in Scotland. In his first season at the club, he scored 15 goals in 37 appearances and won the SPFA Player of the Year award. However, his time in Glasgow was dogged by controversy; he was sent off during a 2–2 draw against Hearts in November 1996 and was heavily involved in an acrimonious league match against Rangers in March 1997 where he behaved aggressively towards Ian Ferguson and gestured in the direction of Rangers' bench as he was led from the field by teammates. He was called to the referee's room after the teams had returned to the dressing room and was shown another yellow card in addition to the one he had received earlier in the game. He demanded a large wage rise at the end of the season, but this was rejected by Celtic. He then refused to join the squad in the Netherlands for their pre-season training during July 1997.

Sheffield Wednesday

On 6 August 1997, Di Canio moved to the English Premiership as he joined Sheffield Wednesday in a transfer deal valued at around £4.2 million. Whilst in Sheffield, Di Canio was the club's leading goal scorer for the 1997–98 season with 14 goals and he became a favourite of the fans.

In September 1998, Di Canio pushed referee Paul Alcock to the ground after being sent off while playing for Sheffield Wednesday against Arsenal at Hillsborough, which resulted in an extended ban of eleven matches. and him being fined £10,000.

West Ham United

In January 1999, Di Canio signed for West Ham United for £1.5 million. He had not played football since his ban following his push on Paul Alcock. West Ham manager Harry Redknapp, on signing Di Canio, admitted that he was taking a chance but said of the player: "He can do things with the ball that people can only dream of". Di Canio said of his ban: "I made a mistake and I'm sorry. West Ham have given me a big chance and I'm very happy". He scored his first goal for West Ham on 27 February 1999 in his fourth game. Playing against Blackburn Rovers, Di Canio made the first goal in a 2–0 win, for Ian Pearce in the 27th minute and scored the second in the 31st minute. He helped them to achieve a high league position (fifth) and qualify for the UEFA Cup through the Intertoto Cup. He was also the OPTA player of the season 1998–99. He scored the BBC Goal of the Season in March 2000 with a flying volley against Wimbledon, which is still considered among the best goals in Premiership history and was named as the Premiership's goal of the decade in a December 2009 Sky Sports News viewers' poll, scoring 30% of votes. In this season he was also voted Hammer of the Year by the club's fans.

In December 2000, late in a game against Everton and with both sides vying for the winning goal, Di Canio shunned a goal-scoring opportunity and stopped play, grabbing the ball from a cross inside the box, as the Everton goalkeeper Paul Gerrard was lying injured on the ground after he twisted his knee attempting a clearance on the edge of the box. The Goodison Park crowd reacted with a standing ovation. FIFA officially lauded Di Canio's gesture, describing it as "a special act of good sportsmanship", and awarded him the FIFA Fair Play Award the following year.

Sir Alex Ferguson tried to sign him for Manchester United halfway through the 2001–02 season, but his attempts were unsuccessful and Di Canio remained in East London for another season and a half. Di Canio insisted that he would not have been able to leave West Ham, who had handed him a "lifeline" in the "worst moment" in his life.

In 2003, with the Hammers struggling at the bottom of the league, Di Canio had a very public row with manager Glenn Roeder and was dropped from the first team. However, he returned at the end of the season (after Roeder, stricken by a brain tumour, was replaced by Trevor Brooking) and scored a winner against Chelsea in the penultimate game of the season, a game that boosted West Ham's chances of staying in the Premiership. However, they were relegated on the final day of the season after a 2–2 draw away to Birmingham City, where Di Canio scored an 89th-minute equaliser. He was released on a free transfer and signed with Charlton Athletic for the start of the 2003–04 season.

Charlton Athletic

In his one season at The Valley, Di Canio helped Charlton finish the season in seventh place, the club's highest league finish since 1953. However, he only scored four league goals for the Addicks, all of which came from the penalty spot (one from a rebound). One of the penalty kicks was an audacious "Panenka"-style penalty kick against Arsenal. Di Canio also continued to be a provider of goals…