Passion statement

London: Paolo Di Canio is in full, unstoppable cry. He knows that some people will always think him barking, but his answer is emphatic and increasingly animated.

"What is mad? What have I ever done that is mad? If it is too much passion, too much desire, if this is mad, then I am very happy to be mad!" he says. "And if it's mad to tell you what I think, even when it's too tough, then I am mad. If to show big emotion makes me mad, I am mad. And so I say this: that in the future, I hope to be even more mad!"

Swindon Town will take Di Canio's kind of madness any day. This is the story of a wholly unlikely love affair between a homely fourth division football club and one of the most flamboyant overseas stars the English game has embraced, the theatrical Italian impresario who has breezed into the old railway town and swept a dowdy old girl off her feet.

And here on a wet, windy, wretched Thursday night on a five-a-side pitch at a Swindon leisure centre, is to see the "Paolo effect" at close quarters as the bobble-hatted Di Canio shields the football from a young bloke tugging away urgently at his shirt. The octopus, it turns out, is the stadium operations manager, Mark Isaacs.

This is the weekly match between the manager and his playing staff against the club's faintly awestruck office workers, one of Di Canio's ideas to bond the Swindon "family".

They all evidently adore him, even though the ultra-competitive Di Canio shrugs: "Obviously, we have to win every time."

Even the club chairman, Jeremy Wray, is out there, playing one-twos with a bloke who, even at 43, is still by far the most skilful player at the club. And the best thing? "I can't push over the ref — we don't have no ref!" booms Di Canio.

On an adjacent pitch, a group of young kids are playing. Sometimes, Di Canio will gatecrash their match, much to their giggling astonishment. That's Paolo, you never know what will happen next.

"But that's good, isn't it?" he smiles, while Wray just laughs: "It's like sailing a dinghy in a force eight, wondering whether you're heading for more fun or a capsising."

The point is nothing is dull at the County Ground anymore. Disillusion reigned before the maverick's arrival. Of course, it was a risk, but once Wray saw Di Canio at his interview, becoming so impassioned during his sales pitch that one of his shirt buttons flew off, he was hooked.

And what has the Roman ever done for Swindon? Apart from delivering them some handsome football, knocking Wigan out of the FA Cup third round, guiding them to fourth place in League Two and into the Johnstone's Paint Trophy semis, that is? "He's energised the whole town," says Wray.

Family sacrifice

It is easier to see the charisma than the workaholic streak which has driven Di Canio to even temporarily sacrifice his family life.

His wife Elisabetta has stayed in Italy overseeing their younger daughter Lucrezia's schooling, while their eldest, Ludovica, a medical student at Southampton University, spends the weekends with her dad here.

"I miss them so much but I have determination, the desire to do this job and fix myself in English football."

Instead, Di Canio has been acting as a kind of home-from-home house dad to the four Italian assistants he has brought with him. "Four nights a week I cook for them," he says. His special? Sweet and sour pheasant with plum.

"I have fantasy in my kitchen! Every time, they finish everything on the plate. I'm not a good manager yet but I'm a great cook."

And he will be a great manager one day too, he is adamant. "Of a Champions League-winning team or national team," he says, matter of factly.

England or Italy? "For me, it's easier to become England manager than Italy's manager!" laughs the man who admits that he is driven towards the idea of managerial greatness to make up for his exotic playing talent never being trusted with a senior cap for his country.

He says he feels more appreciated here than at home, even if he is still comically, almost ballistically, outraged by having been banished to the stands for the third time in his fledgling career last week against Macclesfield.

His crime, he believes, was being too, well, Italian.

"Nobody going to stop me waving my arms," he protests, insistent that his theatricality is in his mum Pierina's blood.

"Maybe the FA and me, we don't understand each other yet, but in five years' time, they'll recognise me as a good manager for the England team.

"I recognise your culture, I love your football. In some ways, it's easier here for me than in Italy. There is more loyalty, more honesty here. The people of Swindon? After my dad Ignazio died, I had a lot of cards and letters; they gave me energy and heart to keep going. I will never forget."

‘My inspirations'

A working-class boy who empathises with a working class town, he looks misty-eyed, gazing at a photo of his parents standing outside the block of flats where he was brought up on Rome's Quarticciolo estate. His mother has been very poorly and dad has gone.

"But they are still my inspirations. I still talk to Dad, take positive energy from him, every night. In some ways, I am a pagan because I believe in the sun and the earth.

"So I have a candle light next to me every day since his death, because I believe, in some ways, this light is the continuation of the sun in the night. I have had dark moments these last few months; Swindon too has been my light."

Di Canio knows that, as chairman Wray says, people will see him as the "Marmite man", a figure to love or hate.

"But I am just a man. I'm not good, I'm not bad. I am a man. I've made mistakes, will make mistakes again but I will never put someone in trouble."

Those supposed fascist sympathies? "I've never had problems with anybody so why do people try to judge me as if I am a Nazi? This is absolutely rubbish. My behaviour is clear; I have a family, I pay tax, I don't cause problems to others, nor judge them on their religion or the colour of their skin."

"Every day I try to improve as a man. But the passion in me, that madness you say, I will not lose." A town that loves St Paolo would have it no other way.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2012

1996 Stay at AC Milan is cut short after a violent dressing room row with coach Fabio Capello. "You're crazy, sick in the head. You are a nobody," Di Canio rages at the current England coach.

1997 Goals and controversy in a year at Celtic, where statements such as ‘hatred can be good' overshadows on-pitch achievements. Di Canio said: "I don't play for liars and traitors." after Celtic decline to renew his contract.

Sept 26, 1998 Banned for 11 matches and fined £10,000 (Dh58,136) for shoving referee Paul Alcock to the ground after being sent off while playing for Sheffield Wednesday against Arsenal at Hillsborough. Later describes Wednesday manager Danny Wilson as a ‘cretin' over handling of the affair.

Feb 12, 2000 Tussles for the ball with regular penalty taker Frank Lampard when West Ham are awarded a spot-kick against Bradford City at Upton Park. Di Canio wins the argument, scores and West Ham go on to triumph 5-4.

Dec 16, 2000 Shuns a goalscoring opportunity for West Ham because Everton goalkeeper Paul Gerrard is lying on the ground with a knee injury. Later collects a Fifa fair play award.

Jan 6, 2005 A stunning goal in the Rome derby is followed by a straight-arm salute to Lazio's notoriously right-wing ultras that prompts a wave of protest. "I am fascist, not racist. I do the Roman [fascist] salute to greet our supporters and those who share my ideas," he says later.

Jan 7, 2012: Hails Swindon's FA Cup third-round defeat of Premier League Wigan as ‘the best moment of my life' and calls for the local authorities to mark the achievement with a ‘small plaque'.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2012

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