138: Gennaro Gattuso, Italy, Topps Match Attax Trading Card Game, England Collector Binder

We are finally responding to a request from the excellent Anglo Italian Pod for a post on a member of Italy’s victorious 2006 World Cup squad. Mat Jolin-Beech may have already covered Francesco Totti and missed out on the opportunity to cover Alessandro Del Piero or Marco Materazzi but there were a host of exceptional footballers he could have chosen from their inspirational captain Fabio Cannavaro to the impossibly handsome Mauro Camoranesi. This blog being what it is though Mat has decided to focus on a loveable shithouse and his time in Scotland. We hope this does the trick lads.

This is the first that may end up being a series of pieces from me with the theme “I forgot they played there” and the opening salvo in this possible theme is Gennaro Gattuso. The midfield hardman is synonymous with AC Milan where, in no particular order, he claimed two Champions League titles, the Coppa Italia, two Serie A winner’s medals, two Italian Super Cups, two UEFA Super Cups, and a FIFA Club World Cup. Not a bad trophy cabinet. Gattuso bookended his career at Perugia between 1995 and 1997 and Sion in 2012/13. In there was a one-year stint at Salernitana after Perugia, and, the point of this post, his one year in Scotland with Glasgow Rangers after that.

I’d genuinely forgot he was there in the glory days of the SPL, well, the Old Firm at least. My memory was jogged thanks to YouTube as is often the case these days. It was a YouTube short about football stories. I’ve watched a few, including about how Alan Shearer almost signed for Manchester United having met Kevin Keegan, then Fergie, then Keegan once more before heading to a trophyless stint, but personal accolade rich, time in the northeast.

This short was a story from Ally McCoist featuring the aforementioned Italian hardman, one Paul Gascoigne, and then manager Walter Smith. The anecdote goes that it was a training session before a big game, possibly even the Old Firm derby, but find the clip to be sure. Gattuso was doing Gattuso things, even in training. Charging around, letting anyone on the pitch know he was there, making his presence felt – probably on everyone’s’ shins. 

Smith, eager not to have his full squad limping into the Ibrox treatment room, and fit and firing for the coming weekend’s game, wanted Gattuso to calm down and go easy. But, the manager couldn’t speak Italian so needed an on-pitch translator. Enter Gazza. The story goes that Smith called the Englishman over, and wanted him to pass the message on knowing he spoke at least some Italian after his time at Lazio. Gazza then trotted over the Italian, and passed on the message – at least in Smith’s eyes.

What happened next was Gattuso stepped it up a notch, and went lunging in on everyone within a five-mile radius. What had occurred wasn’t just a case of Chinese whispers, but Gazza being Gazza – although this didn’t involve him wielding a fishing rod and a bucket of KFC. He’d told Gattuso that the manager wanted to be impressed ahead of the game, and wanted him to be fully committed and putting everything into training in order to get into the starting eleven. Cue bruised shins all around, and one laughing Geordie.

In the long run, this didn’t really help his Ibrox career, with him leaving the following season when new manager Dick Advocaat didn’t favour the Italian and sold him for £4 million. A move to AC Milan followed, and the rest, as they say, is history. Gattuso's talismanic midfield partnership with playmaker Andrea Pirlo, both at club and international level, played a key role in Italy's World Cup victory in 2006. But back in Scottish football’s halcyon days of the mid-to-late 1990s he graced the Ibrox turf. I say graced, it may be more charged around for a brief stint in the 1997/98 season, terrorising the opposition north of the border as a nineteen year-old.