AC Milan’s World Cup winning boss was in an infamous scuffle with Joe Jordan and is dangerous with a fork in his hand
IT’S often said that Gennaro Gattuso could start a fight in an empty room.
Nicknamed ‘Rino’, Gattuso was a tough, combative defensive midfielder who played over 400 times for AC Milan, 73 times for Italy and established himself as a cult hero in a short stay in Glasgow at Rangers.
Currently the coach of his beloved Milan, he has brought the same intensity, passion and, well, madness to management as he showed when he was a player…
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He’s always good value in a press conference…
After a game against Juventus earlier this year, a reporter asked Gattuso the following question, - if you can call it a question:
“If Calhanoglu’s strike had gone in instead of hitting the crossbar, you probably would have got a better result”
Gattuso’s response was genius.
“If my grandfather had three balls he would be a pinball machine.”
He’ll take on anybody…
We all remember this, don’t we?
It’s February 2011 and AC Milan v Spurs in the Champions League at the San Siro.
Throughout the game, Gattuso engages in a slanging match with Spurs coach Joe Jordan and, eventually, it boils over at the final whistle with the shirtless skipper headbutting Jordan, himself a former Milan player.
Later, Gattuso claims Jordan called him “a f****** Italian b******” but UEFA disagreed.
They banned Gattuso for four games.
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But then nobody was exempt from his temper…
It wasn’t just the opposition that found themselves on the receiving end of Gattuso’s passion.
In the 2006 World Cup, Italy needed to beat the Czech Republic to make the last 16 and, crucially, avoid the possibility of playing Brazil and when they finally grabbed the killer second goal to seal the game, Gattuso ran to the touchline and slapped his manager Marcelo Lippi across the face.
Imagine what he would have done if he’d been angry?
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But he’s more than happy for people to slap him…
As the new manager of AC Milan, Gattuso has overseen a much-needed boost in their form and after a win against Lazio in January he allowed his players to gang up and slap him instead.
Makes a change.
“I just want to make them happy, especially the players angry with me because are on the bench,” he told Italian TV. “So now they have chance to slap me.”
He Married into a showbiz family…
Kind of.
Gattuso is married to Monica Romano. He met her when he was playing for Rangers in an exhibition game in Toronto and she just happens to be the sister of GMTV’s Los Angeles correspondent Carla Romano.
Not exactly Posh and Becks, we know, but nice nonetheless.
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He played through the pain barrier…
In September 2011, Gattuso crashed into his teammate Alessandro Nesta during Milan’s Serie A game against Lazio.
Taken off as a precautionary measure, he was later diagnosed with cranial nerve palsy, a condition that resulted in double vision and the reason he had failed to see Nesta before they collided.
Indeed, Gattuso later admitted that he had seen another teammate, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, in four different positions during the early stage of the match against Lazio.
Gattuso lost the sight in his left eye temporarily and was out of the game for six months before making a successful return to action for the Rossoneri.
He taught Paolo Dybala everything he knows…
Well, only about football’s darker arts.
The Argentine striker was a young hopeful when he teamed up with the veteran at Palermo in 2013 and Gattuso was quick to teach him all about how Italian football works.
“Gattuso helped me a great deal because he was one of the guys who would kick me,”explains the striker. “He used to give me advice on how I had to position myself to dodge the blows… he would kick me just to teach me how to defend myself.”
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He’s a superstitious so and so...
As Italy progressed through the tournament at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Gattuso became convinced it was partly down to his lucky tracksuit.
Despite the intense heat that summer, Gattuso kept it on for the entire month Italy were away – without washing it.
It did the trick.
Italy won and the World Cup – even if Gattuso did stink a bit.
He had a wild side…
With a reputation for not being the sharpest tool in the toolbox, Gattuso has often found himself being ridiculed by his Italian teammates.
In his autobiography, Andrea Pirlo revealed a catalogue of tales of the lengths they went to wind him up.
Trouble was, they knew ‘Rino’ would bite, especially at meal times.
“You could see the red mist coming down and he just wasn’t able to hide it,” write Pirlo.
“We could tell what was coming and so we’d commandeer all the knives. Gattuso would grab a fork and try to stick it in us.
“Some of us ended up missing games because of one of Rino’s fork attacks, even if the official explanation from the club was one of muscle fatigue.”
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He’s showing no signs of changing…
As the current manager of AC Milan, Gattuso is intent on imposing the same hard line approach to his management style as he did when he was playing.
Recently, he’s been unimpressed by his 19-year-old youth player Hachim Mastour’s habit of posting football trick videos on YouTube.
So he’s put a stop to it.
“He doesn’t do that anymore because I told him I’d knock his teeth out.”
Fair enough.
But then he can’t get his head round modern football…
We’ll leave you with the man himself, summing up the modern game in his own inimitable way.
“When I lost a match I broke down in frustration,” he sighs. “Today, players lose, take a selfie and put it on the internet.
“They make me sick.”
This story originally appeared in The Sun.
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