Hardliner or headbanger?

The football world is littered with the shattered egos of former players. Many move on with their lives after their careers are over, some move into coaching, but soon realise that the adoration is reserved for the lads on the pitch. 

Paolo Di Canio is a man who conducted himself as if he were still the main focus of everyone’s attention long after he had graced the game with his skill and talent.

At Swindon he probably was still the 'main man'. Many of the players in Leagues One and Two are trying their hardest to just make sure they cover the mortgage and feed the kids. It’s a job they are desperate to keep in an increasingly cut-throat industry where thousands of decent footballers find themselves out of work each summer. Like the rest of us, they need to bite their tongues when the boss behaves like a prat. Those that didn’t at the County Ground soon found themselves taking part in Di Canio’s “revolving door transfer policy” as one victim told me.

Sunderland’s Premier League players are a different breed. They are at the top of their profession and many of them can afford to buy a house outright on less than one season’s wages, let alone worry about a mortgage. If the manger is foolish enough to cross them, they can certainly afford to bide their time until he’s history. And they have.

I have questioned Di Canio’s style on these pages before now. His political hero is the fascist dictator Mussolini (by his own admission) and while his chin jutting performance in front of the Sunderland fans at the weekend might just have been a request for the supporters  to keep theirs  up, it was also uncannily reminiscent of the Italian despot’s style.

When you are managing individuals you need to take the time and effort to work out what makes each one tick and then get them to buy in to your philosophy.

It's true that some people react well to a kick up the backside, but their are many others that need to be encouraged or to be shown explicitly what their roles are in the overall picture.

Di Canio seemed to believe that his word was all that counted - very much a dictatorial approach.

Listening to Di Canio’s post-match analysis was often torture for the media. He would ramble on and on without actually saying much that made sense - and this had nothing to do with his broken English. His mind seemed to wander and while he would be addressing one point, he would suddenly go off in another direction. Forget the poor sods in the Press Room, the players can’t have found this easy on the training ground either.

His passion for what he wanted to achieve at both clubs can’t be questioned, merely his ability to manage individuals, set his ego to one side and massage those of others for the greater good of the club.

I suspect that this isn’t the last we will have seen of Di Canio.  It’s Arrivederci for now, but don’t put it past him to dazzle some other unsuspecting Chairman into giving him another chance in English football.