(Photo by Massimo Cebrelli/Getty Images)
There was a time and place to simply ignore Antonio Cassano.
His demeanour could've challenged the conduct of a sulking child, given that the Italian turned off many pundits and fans with on-field bravado as a burgeoning star.
Speaking out of turn would have been considered a mild response from him, as he hurled himself—and unsanitary language—to fellow managers, referees and teammates daunted with the task of restraining him. It was an eclectic act that eventually shaped his public persona.
Not that he did anything to really curb it in his infant stages on the football scene. He’d be the one leading a charge of bulls if the moment had it right.
Effusive, acrimonious and averse to the concept of team play, it was as though Cassano was more suitable to redirect all that bottled anger and aggression in a ring.
It stemmed from no singular event—though being raised in bruised neighbourhoods and around sketchy alleys in Bari, perhaps his temperament is something of an inborn tendency—but his petulance festered as his stints with renowned clubs became the butt of derision and scorn.
Fabio Capello, current coach of the England national team, knows more about what Cassano preaches than perhaps anyone else. Capello oversaw the irritable striker at Roma in 2002 and was then again reunited in 2006 at the helm of Real Madrid.
As if nature would cease to be tranquil, the two engaged in so many quarrels and disputes that not only were both bickering incessantly, but they also began a love-hate affair that to this day bears more anecdotes that can be gestated.
Their only mutual quality was that each helped blend a dog’s breakfast of mean-spirited jives and sporadic bouts of respect between them. For opinions cast on each man dithered with the caprice of an eager pup.
“I looked on him as the source of all truth, and then thought [he] was about as genuine as a €3 coin. We couldn’t agree on anything. He would stress the importance of order and discipline; I’d tell him the reasons for disorder and indiscipline. I started doing the opposite of what he said,” Cassano recalls in his recent autobiography, Vi Dico Tutto (I’ll Tell You Everything).
Although Cassano’s infidelities ranged further than what was experienced between him and Capello, it proves to be the most durable example of hardship from his career.
He later recounted that Capello, while at Madrid, would associate anyone with whom Cassano courted off the field as a proponent of his lifestyle. It made him feel like “a malignant cancer, so that anybody with me would be considered an enemy to (Capello)."
Like David Beckham, for example.
"When we were in front of the coach I pretended to hardly know Beckham, in case that made his life more difficult.”
And the fire continued to be stoked. Unsure of who exactly was the villain and who was the hero, Cassano and Capello would bestow the following public with massive reasons for confusion.
One could rationalize that their relationship was maintained by this habitual rite, but what led to the utter exclusion of Cassano in Madrid during the 2005-06 season initiated a period of distance between the coach and striker.
Left estranged, Cassano was delivered to Sampdoria. Bound in the air is still a yearning for an explanation for his isolation in Spain; though sifting through his memory, he finds clippings of his time with Madrid that illustrate a retroactive—and quite ironic—image.
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