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Sheffield Wednesday manager David Pleat recalls an issue with signing Paolo Di Canio in 1997, with the Italian failing to attend a meeting to finalise details about the transfer.
Pleat already had Benito Carbone with him at Hillsborough when an idea hit him: sign another Italian to make his star player feel settled in Yorkshire.
Carbone signed in October 1996 and started well, scoring six goals in his first season as Sheffield Wednesday finished seventh in the Premier League. Pleat knew the diminutive forward had more to give, though, with the Englishman believing that signing Paolo Di Canio would help unlock his potential.
Sheffield Wednesday were given the run around by Paolo Di Canio
“Carbone came to me courtesy of Roy Hodgson at Inter,” Pleat exclusively tells FourFourTwo. “He had size six boots – tiny feet – but superb control. He was a good player. On occasions he didn’t look interested, and because he was a lonely boy in Sheffield I thought, ‘Maybe if I sign another Italian, he’ll have a friend over here’. But it worked against us in the end because they were together and it became a slightly fractured dressing room.
Indeed, Pleat only stayed on as Wednesday manager until November 1997, just four months after signing Di Canio for £4.2m from Celtic. Just eight points from their opening 13 games in the league signalled the end of his tenure – which proved almost as difficult as signing Di Canio in the first place.
“I’d been to watch Di Canio at Celtic,” Pleat says. “I got a taxi to the hotel and the taxi driver said, ‘What are you doing here today?’ I said, ‘I’ve only come to watch the game.’ He said, ‘Don’t kid me – you’ve come to watch Di Canio. We’ve only got one player’ I got a taxi to the ground and this taxi driver said, ‘You’ve messed up today because the best player isn’t playing – Di Canio is the best we’ve had for years.’ I got to the ground and he wasn’t playing.
“When I got a taxi back to the hotel, that taxi driver said, ‘You’ve had a wasted journey today – the best player we’ve ever had here is Di Canio.’ I went back to Sheffield and the chairman asked, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I said, ‘I think we should sign him.’ I never told him why… three taxi drivers can’t be wrong!
“Then we were on a training camp, due to meet Di Canio at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to sign him – and he didn’t turn up, the bastard! His agent was coming on his behalf. The chairman said, ‘If he doesn’t turn up, we ain’t going to sign him’ Two hours later, we signed him.”
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Things started off brilliantly, too. In the opening five games of the season Carbone scored four and Di Canio once. It quickly unravelled after that, however.
“I put him and Carbone together in a game at Aston Villa and they played ever so well. A director said afterwards, ‘What about them Italians? We’re going to do well with them.’ Not long after that – Manchester United – they never tried a leg, the bastards, and we lost 6-1! That was the end of me: I got sacked.”