December 27, 2022 • 35 mins
In his own words, he was a prima donna, problematic, fat, disgusting, and in the wrong 99% of the time. This is Antonio Cassano, the ultimate tale of squandered talent.
Francesco Totti called him the best player he’d ever played with. Raul said he had never seen anyone like him. The coach who gave him his debut said: "Players like Antonio are born only once every 30 years." Precious few start with as much natural talent as Antonio Cassano had. No one has done so little with it.
The Best Soccer Podcast In The World is a bilingual podcast that tells your soon-to-be favorite soccer stories. The host, Nando Vila, will crack open some of the most iconic World Cup moments, putting them in cultural and geopolitical contexts. From legendary players to silly hairdos, to heart-wrenching losses.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Francisco d'otti called him the best player he'd ever played with.
Rauru said he had never seen anyone like him. Bogenio Facitti,
the coach who gave him his debut, said players like
Antonio are born only once every thirty years. And in
his own words, he was a prima donna, problematic, fat,
disgusting and in the wrong ninety nine percent of the time.
(00:26):
This is the dichotomy of Antonio Cassano. The ultimate tale
of squandered talent is a little bit like that the
famous George Best story about what he did with his
money after his career. Manchester United winger George Best was
asked what had happened to his wealth. His reply quote,
I spent a lot of money on booze birds and
(00:46):
fast cars. The rest I just squandered. Cassano was cut
from the same cloth. He had a hole between the
a tree of his heart that would later cause a stroke,
and no amount of pastries or sex workers could fill it.
He was kind of the first sort of hip hop
Italian superstar, even using five percent of his talent. He
was a ridiculous athlete. He was incredible and it is
(01:08):
crazy to look bad think that he did so little
with all the talent, and all of a sudden people
are like, wow, it really felt like something extraordinary that happened.
He had acne a permanently in Susian grin. He was brash,
(01:30):
he was loud, tore his shirt off in frustration, and
Cassano ended up ended up prime. He's one of the
great figures of Italian football, but not one of the
great players. You could have been one of the best
players in the world. The knowledge that you had ultimately
squandered your talent, it's like, yeah, so what you have
a ferrari? I mean he had a career, right. You
(01:52):
can trace Santonio Cassano's career through his nicknames the Jewel
of Old Body, fant Antonio, Peter Pan, the boy who
refused to grow up, and later as he ate his
way through pastries and paychecks, Gorto from a once in
a generation talent through the pounds of nutella in Straight
from the Jar to a World Cup debut at thirty one?
(02:14):
Was his a tale of wasted talent or of a
boy saved from the streets and allowed to live the
lavish life of a millionaire. This is the best soccer
podcast in the world, and today we're talking the career
of Antonio Cassano goes with it, but it's still Christiano Ronaldo. Yeah, yeah,
(02:53):
never sin. I think it's fair to say that Cassano's
best goal was his first when he was only seventeen.
Cassano's playing for Body in the Deep South, Body who
(03:15):
are a fairly unglamorous provincial side way down at the
southern end of Italy. We should introduce our guests. My
name is James Richardson. I watched football and then I
talked about it and I asked questions about it, and
I do this for a series of places, but principally
I guess a podcast called the Totally Football Shot. I'm
Gabriel Marcotti. I'm a senior writer for ESPN. I'm also
(03:40):
the UK correspondent for the Italian sports daily Sport. The
goal came in Castano's second game as a professional, and
they're playing one of the top teams in city at
the time, in Ted Inted had Ronaldo, Christian Panucci, Clarence Didor,
newly crowned World Cup winner Longblong and the most expensive
transfer up to that point in history, Christian Viety. It
(04:09):
doesn't do stop, and the manager decides to throw on
a seventeen year old product of their Vivo their youth program,
who with think something like seventeen minutes to play. He
comes on and you often see this like names, you know,
they chuck on the local kid, hoping to that he
can do something with the enthusiasm of the crowd. But
(04:30):
he scores his phenomenal goal, proceeds to burst down the wing.
A long ball a bit of a hell Mary passes
sent up to him. He manages to kill it with
the back of his letter with with with his heel,
essentially and without breaking stride, races past a couple of
defenders and absolutely slams it passed into his goalkeeper and
everybody just completely loses it, and all of a sudden,
(04:52):
people are like, wow, he's mobbed by club officials. The
referee books him for running into the fans guess sort
of shrugs like how else am I supposed to celebrate that,
and gives the ref a side hug. That night, when
he drove home, the street was so crowded he couldn't
fit his car through. People brought offerings of pasta, olive oil,
(05:13):
bread and Champagne. He wrote, quote the day before I
had nothing to eat. Now I had enough food to
become obese. Our expectations were so high for Cassano. When
he scored that goal against Inter we immediately leapt on
a plane and went down to Barty. I was initially
at the time with basically making a show about the
Italian game for a UK audience, so we went straight
(05:35):
down there to kind of get to this phenomenon, to
kind of pay our respects at the you know, the
place where the shot star was probably gonna be shining
above it, with three wise men at the door. It
really felt like something extraordinary had happened. Cassano wrote, I
was almost Brad Pitt and all thanks to a back heel.
Football really can perform miracles. The next day, the Italian papers,
(05:56):
who have a certain ponchan for romanticizing figures, looked across
the fact that Cassano Cassano was born the day after
Italy won the eighty two World Cup, and it's clearly
his destiny to become the next great Italian player, which
as we now know, never really happens. He later wrote
that if it weren't for that goal against Ian, did
(06:16):
he would have gone on to become a thief or worse,
a delinquent. At any rate, Cassano grew up in poverty
in the San Nicola district of Badi Veka. This is
Old Barry, which is a fairly intimidating place if you're
not from there. I mean, at the time it was
it was famed as being the micro criminality center of
of Italy, you know, a petty crime, essentially an example
(06:38):
of his neighborhood. Years later, while visiting home, his Porsche
was stolen from out front of his mother's house. A
neighbor called into a local radio station and within twenty
four hours the car was returned, with a bouquet and
an apology no attached. I think it was interesting about
Cassano too, was his his personal story, which also kind
of captured the imagination single mom never knew his dad.
(07:01):
A lot of the people he grew up around, you know,
we're a lot of them had serious issues with the law.
I think he was kind of the first, certainly one
of the first Italian footballers where you know, you might
make a parallel with the old stereotype about the guy
from the rough neighborhood who goes on to play in
(07:22):
the NBA or the NFL, and but he's got friends
who were gangsters or whatever. Casana would play soccer on
the streets in the Old Town Square, running between park
cars to get the ball. They played until dusk until
the police came to break it up. Then they throw
tomatoes and eggs at the cops. He had repeated arrests
for driving a motorbike without a license or a helmet.
(07:45):
He started playing soccer for whoever would play him, sometimes
making two to three euros a day. That led to
his first youth contract with Body Young Casano at the time,
we're earrings, necklace, frosted tips. We're talking peak nineties here.
So physically in terms of the way that he looks,
not unlike if James Woods had had quite a sporting
(08:07):
but also quite given to chomping pizza's son, Cassano had
quite a similarity to the noted American actor, a stocky build,
not unlike Paul Gascoyne. Perhaps if you're familiar with him
when I first made him, and that's this is the
way I remember him. Somewhat kind of pop mark skin,
but you know, teenage skin issues and um, not a
(08:28):
mop but a kind of a crop, that's the word of,
sort of spiky ish blonde hair and a permanently insusient grin.
I would say, take that mischievous grin, his sheer, natural
ability and the goal, and soon enough Cassano was one
of the most coveted teenagers in Europe. Italy was famous
(08:48):
for not giving players a chance before they were into
their early twenties. So the fact that you could have
a seventeen year old coming on and then scoring a
goal like that was just it was truly remarkable. The
thing about Cassano as a player was that this when
he was young, before other stuff got on the way.
He was a ridiculous athlete. He was incredibly quick, and
(09:09):
he was incredibly strong, to go with this incredible creativity
that he had on the pitch and a really really
solid technical bass, and that's what got everybody excited. They said, like,
all right, you know you have these gifts. As soon
as you harness them, you know you're going to be
one of the best players in the world. And it
is crazy to look bad and think that he did
so little with all the talent, but we didn't know
(09:32):
that yet. Roma definitely didn't the reigning Syria champions, paid
the equivalent of thirty million euros to sign him, making
him the most expensive teenager in soccer up to that point.
It didn't matter that he was two hours late to
his meeting with the Roma president Franco Senzi. The talent
justified it. Cassano won the Young Syria Player of the
(09:53):
Year award twice at Roma and said his goal was
to win the ballon Dar. With his new increased wages,
Casano immediately bought a series of Mercedes sports cars, Ferrari
in a blue Ferrari for fifty six, owned by Gaffo.
He was too lazy to find an apartment, so initially
he moved in with club captain Francisco Dadi. There were
(10:15):
some wonderful scenes when he had his brief spell at
Roma with one of the other great natural Italian talents,
Francisco Totti, who very different personalities, but there was something
about the way that they liked to play football that
I guess was similar, because they could just link up
almost without any any need for looking at where the
other one was. There's one particular clip which has become
(10:38):
quite famous of essentially the two of them just progressing
up the field without any worry about the opposition or
any particular need for their teammates, just passing the ball
between themselves as they advanced the full length of the
pitch where their goal comes at the end of it.
That almost was beside the point. It was just so
magnificent to see these great jeneyve of the Italian game
just enjoying each other in such a fashion. And Cassano
(11:02):
would suggest things like, oh, you know, we got invited
to this party in this club tonight. They're like yeah,
but the clubs in Milan. It's like yeah, so what
you have a ferrari. So they leave at nine pm
for the fifty mile trip from Rome to Milan driving
speed limits should take you four and a half hours,
and they pride themselves and doing it in you know,
(11:24):
two hours, and then they get there and their party
and then we go back the other you know. These
are all the types of things that that he would do.
Cassano was nearly unmanageable. His coach at Roma was a
hard man pragmatist named Fabio Capello, famously stern from the
northeast of Italy Fruli, which with every kind of straight
(11:45):
laced and not given to talking at Cassano from the
opposite end of the country and in character terms of
complete opposite. But then maybe Capella was the kind of
guy that he needed to keep him on the straight
and narrow and off the donuts and nocturnal visitors got
Pillow invented an expression, Cassanta just means a stupid thing
(12:06):
that you did, a stupid thing that of the sort
that only Cassano would do. He would go a wall
with his phone turned off. He'd brought buckets of water
above doorways in the dressing room. He'd hired teammates underwear
when they showered. He swapped the salt and the sugar
in the cafeteria. Another occasion under Capello when he turned
up having had a driving accident when he didn't actually
(12:27):
have a license. He liked to steal the keys to
the back door during training camp and let in lovers
late at night. I've read that he was kind of
the first sort of hip hop Italian superstar, and the
reason for that is that there's something very regimented in
the Italian kind of production line of footballers. You get
picked up by a local club, but then you go
into the academy of the top club, and you know
(12:49):
you dressed a certain way. Preppy. You know, you train,
you go to school, you gotta stay in line all
the time, and you have to look a certain way
and so on. With Cassano, there was none of that.
I mean, he really didn't care. He had acne, he
had terrible acne, and he was proud of it. He
was brash, he was loud, you know, he he listened
(13:09):
to the rop and not good rap, as some of
his team mates, who were into inter Wrap pointed out.
And he didn't care. He played into this, this character,
this Casano character. More about what happened next after the break.
(13:30):
The first two years at Roma were patchy. He was
perplexed why they had paid all this money but didn't
automatically start hitting. In the final against a se Milan,
Casano got upset and made cuckold horns at the referee,
who understandably sent him off. Casano then trashed the dressing room.
But the talent was there too. It started to click.
(13:52):
In his third year at Roma two thousand three, Casino
started all but one league game and scored fourteen goals
in City uh plus another four goals in six we
Cup matches. He got booked just two times. One of
those came against Juventus, and this story is very Casano.
Before the game, he asked Capelo if he could destroy
(14:14):
a corner flag if he scored twice. Capeto said, sure,
scored twice and you can go ahead and reck all
four dude right. Combine asked to be cas I don't
want a penalty, and when tut He scored it to
put Rama to ahead, Casano scored it a coach in
the face with a water bottle. He then proceeded to
(14:34):
score two of his own delicate finishes past Juigi Buffon.
Casano then stripped off his shirt and kicked the living
crap out of that poor corner flag. It's snapped in half.
A perplexed looking berg Colina, the legendary referee, booked him
Roma one four nil. The night before, Casano had stolen
(14:55):
the keys to the training ground, start got to have
sex and returned at six am. That oft times when
it worked, and that only increased the frustration of what
you felt, because the idea of totty and him being
able to dialogue, as the Italians would say, with the
ball just felt like a level of football. We hadn't
really seen before both got the call to represent Italy
(15:15):
at euro two thousand and four. He was incredible. Cassano,
funny enough, had been that the one positive thing of
that Italy performance. It hadn't gone well for Italy, that
European Championship. You know, Italy will always live with with
(15:37):
a ton of regret. They were playing deeply defensive football
under their manager, Javanny Trumpetonio was a deeply defensive manager
about a very lovely man, and Cassano, who couldn't play
deeply defensive football, I mean under any circumstances, was as
a result, kind of the only really bright point of that. Initially,
he wasn't even supposed to start. Dotty played the first
(15:58):
game against Denmark and was expected to continue next to
Vieri and Asano Pio despite the nil nil draw, but
duty was suspended after the fact for spitting afterwards. So
it turns out Danish television had their own separate camera
(16:19):
which was trained purely on Talk To and the guy
who was man marking him, Christian Poulson, because they wanted
to do this sort of additional tactical piece about Poulson's
man marking job on Talk To this camera picks up
talk the spitting on Pulson. Then Cassano comes in. Um,
they play Sweden next, and they absolutely batter Sweden but
(16:43):
only score once. Hello, the top scorers at Euro two
thousand full Sweden came up against one of the mainst
defenses in world football. Agitate. Sweden scores the most incredible
equalizer through who else but slots on Ibrahemovich. This crazy
sort of hulked back. Ye all that you know, Nobody,
even to this day, you don't know how I went
(17:05):
in said that Freddy look back outside with a guilty
basset stop. That's done in I said that men Italy
needed to win the final group game against Bulgaria. If
they did, they'd progress, except if Sweden and Denmark finished
two too. Literally any other result would do combined with
(17:25):
an Italy win. It's deep into stoppage time and Italy
is still tied. Then in the fourth minute of injury time,
the ball trickles through to Cassano. You do, baby. I
just remember Cassano's face after he scored against Bulgaria, you know,
running back, being so excited. And then I was at
(17:47):
that game and then word comes through of what was
happening in the other game, and in the Sweden Denmark game,
or Denmark and Sweden finished two two. Italy we're out
because I ended up, ended up, crying, should be out
of you right somewhere. Cassano and returned to Roma, but
(18:19):
coach Capello didn't. Casano stormed out of a training session
before the season even began. In the first game back,
he got sent off for shoving an opponent to the ground.
His contract was winding down and neither side would budge
in the negotiations. He acted out as Roma churned through coaches.
He called one of them Luigi Denetti, not a man. Eventually,
(18:41):
Cassano even fell out with the source of the feud
was that they were both booked to a pierod a
TV show, and Cassano found out that got paid more.
I think many observers when he went to Rome and
everything seems set for him too. It looked like the
perfect stage, the perfect opportunity for him to do everything
you wanted. So the team was set up for him.
(19:03):
You had Capella, who was one of the most successful
Italian managers, You had Tottie by his side, and they
and everybody wanted it to work. And they wanted Cassano
at the sentiment and it didn't so that. I guess
if there was a heartbreaking moment where you felt this
story wasn't going to have the happy ending we thought
it was going to have, that was maybe it. But
you know, I mean, he had a career or right,
(19:24):
Cassano wrote, quote, after a year of arguing with everyone,
I left. He signed for Real Madrid for only five
million euros, a bargain since he only had half a
year left on his contract. For the unveiling, he quote
got up early at ten. You didn't just go to
Real Madrid. He goes to Real Madrid and shows up
wearing the most ridiculous cold I appreciate this as a podcast,
(19:46):
and I don't know you can't do that, but I
invite everybody just to google Cassano a Real Madrid colt
and look at what he was wearing with the gold
chains this and even know how you would describe what
the all he was wearing that that's very much in character.
Let's side. He was wearing a brown fur coat, a necklace,
silver earrings, and a silver ring on his pinky finger.
(20:09):
It started fine. He scored in his second game, but
was subb doubt anyway. This confused him. He rarely made
it the full ninety minutes, having shown up vastly overweight.
In one rare instance, when he completed a game, he
ate ten packets of potato chips on the train ride
home in full view of traveling journalists. He wrote that
(20:29):
his retirement goal was to get very, very, very fat.
I should probably explain where we're getting all of these
Cassano quotes from. In two thousand and ten, he wrote
an autobiography called Dicot I'll tell Everything, It's wild. The
book starts in the very first chapter he talks about
how you know when he retires. His plan is to
(20:51):
become fat, but like not fat like he is now,
but like obese, because he loves food so much and
he gets the sexual satisfaction from gorging himself on food.
Madrid started finding him for every Graham that he was overweight,
leading to the nickname Elrito or Little Thaddy. Nutella was
one of the team's sponsors. Each player received eleven pounds
(21:14):
a month. Casano ate it straight from the jar. He
gained over thirty pounds in just seven months in Madrid.
When he was around Madrid before games. They would stay
in this hotel the night before a game, and that
you weren't supposed to. He would always arrange for women
to come, but he was always make them go by
go by this his favorite pastry shop, and they would
(21:36):
bring boxes and boxes of pastries. And sometimes he said,
like sometimes I wouldn't even sleep with him. I just
said and eat, I need all the pastry. Casano claims
to have slept with six or seven hundred women, quote
sex and then food a perfect night. Overweight and out
of form, he was left off the Italy squad for
the two thousand and six World Cup by coach Marti.
(22:00):
Was he particularly missed for two thousand and six when
the roster was I don't think so. I think by then,
apart from the fact that Machello Lippi didn't have many
people who were ready to second guess him. His reputation
was so so high that you didn't have that usual
thing of people weighing in with their opinions or what
he should shouldn't do. And to consider that Cassano wasn't
(22:21):
quite the kind of player you needed for a World
Cup squad, a very specific kind of group of players
for a specific kind of objective. I don't think it
was that surprising to too many people. Italy won that
World Cup. Casano watched from home, just as he did
(22:42):
when Real Madrid won the league. The following season, his
old coach, Fabio Capello, joined Real Madrid, which offered Casano
a second chance, but he didn't take it. Before one game,
Casino called Capello quote more fake than monopoly money. TV
cameras Casino impersonating the coach to his laughing to teammates.
Casano was fined and separated from the team he was
(23:05):
I don't think he's particularly troubled by the fact that
his time at Real Madrid, the ultimate dream destination for
so many of the world's footballers, is chiefly notable for
his astonishing consumption of a donuts and being nocturnal visitors
at a top Real Madrid hotel. Casino only made seven
appearances and scored one goal that year. On the last
(23:26):
day of the season, while Real Madrid won the league
in dramatic fashion, he skipped the game and went back
to his house in Rome to watch with friends and
fifteen women. Casano claimed that he would walk back to
Italy to play for Roma again. Instead, he joined some
Dodia on loan. He lost twenty two pounds and celebrated
(23:47):
his first goal for the club by stripping off his
shirt to show off his new hot pod. Some Dodia
is a relatively midweight team in Italy which has only
won the league once. There, Casano formed a strike partnership
with jump Paolo Pazzini to fire them into the Champions League.
Cassano called club president Ricardo Gardo the father he wished
(24:07):
he had. He married a water polo player named Garina Martialis.
Things seemed to be turning around despite his uptakeing form.
Lippy again left Cassano off the two thousand and ten
World Cup roster, and Cassano, at the time was twenty
years old. He was back in Italy, he was scoring
goals by he was also getting injured quite a bit,
(24:29):
and he was also kind of Ubert Cassano. The problem,
I think the fundamental problem that the Italians took about
a reheated soup. It's basically it's getting back together with
your ex. It's just trying to do something that was
successful again. And Italy bizarrely went to Machella Lippi in
two thousand and ten. He went with many of the
same players, and incredibly lightning did not strike the second time.
(24:51):
Cassano's exclusion, I don't remember being the biggest thing of that.
Italy crashed out in the group stages. That's it, That
is it? What if they all time World Cup upsets
Slovakia ever going through Italian ignominy Slovakia on here. From
(25:13):
what I remember, you know, Lippy said, I want to
reward the guys who I trust and he shut the
door on him as then his successor, of course, who
was all very much touchy, feeling in touch with feelings
and stuff like that. He brought Cassano back, but I'm
nearly made a point to include Cassano in his first
(25:33):
starting lineup and built the team around him. Casano hadn't
scored for Italy since Euro two thousand and four. He
became Italy's leading scorer with six, firing them into Euro.
But and there he credited his marriage with calming him
down back at the club, though it was typical Cassano.
He got a five game ban and a fifteen thousand
(25:55):
euro fine for trying to fight a referee in a
game against Rino. Possibly the ultimate Cassan out is when
he offered the referee out and I'm not sure if
that expression means anything outside the UK, but when he
was at sam Doria he was deeply upset with a
refereeing decision, was sent off, tore his shirt off in frustrations,
(26:15):
flung it to the ground and started to make his
way down the tunnel, then decided against it, returned to
the field with various people trying to usher him back
out before he caused any more problems, and started screaming
at the referee that he would see him outside, you know,
to settle matters. He refused to attend an awards ceremony
and fell out with his father figure the club president.
(26:37):
A tribunal wouldn't let somebody terminate his contract, but they
did cut his wages in half. A solution came in
January of two eleven, in the form of a transfer
to a C Milan. Cassano called it the last chance
in his career and said that if he failed at
Milan he quote should be put in a mental hospital.
He joined in January and Milan won the league a
(26:59):
couple of months later. Then, at nine, he suffered a stroke.
In typical Casano fashion, he argued with the club doctor
about going to the hospital for an hour. Four days later,
he had heart surgery. Casano survived and returned to the field,
despite being only he started for Italy in euro alongside
(27:27):
another combustible talent in Mario. Cassano led Italy to the final,
where they lost heavily to Spain. All the celebrations can
start now. Spain champions of Europe for the second time
in a row, and this Golden generation has yet another trophic.
(27:52):
I like to think of Cassan. I think of a
Cassano and super Mario Balotelli playing up front, and I
get excited because they were players. They were incredibly flawed
personalities who you know, never lived up to their potential.
I mean, when you think about kindred spirits, balt and
Cassano have a certain amount of certain amount in common
(28:12):
in terms of the way they like to play, but
also the way they like to approach life. Cassano, I
think is the more devil may care by a considerable distance, which,
given that the other one is Balatelli, says a lot
about who Cassano is. When Milan sold some key players,
(28:33):
Cassano demanded out. They traded him. Weirdly enough, team did
for his old strike partner Pazzini after a year of
arguments with the coach there, and sent him to Part
of My Part of My President Domazzo gid out of
the admitted that people called him mad for signing Cassano,
but it paid off. Cassano desperately wanted to play in
(28:53):
a World Cup and one was coming up in two
thousand and fourteen in Brazil. In the spring, Saddle gave
himself a zero percent chance of making the roster. He
lost twenty pounds again his diet secret. He cut back
to eating foca only once a week. He scored twelve goals,
assisted six, led the league in key passes, and lifted
(29:16):
Bottoma into the European places. He begged Br'mdeli to take
him to Brazil and but I'm derely obliged. Once the
world's most expensive teenager a prodigy, Cassano would make his
World Cup debut aged thirty one. Obviously, that whole expedition
(29:37):
didn't work out. More about what happened next After the
break in the two thousand and fourteen World Cup. But
I'm Delli chose Bydelli to play alone up front, but
then he felt that he couldn't He couldn't afford to
play Casano together. You know, anecdotally people say, oh, I
(30:00):
can have one of these guys, not too so called
problem children, you know, when they're not performing. Casano came
on in the second match as a sub against Costa Rica.
Da Italy lost. One of the biggest newspapers in Italy
(30:26):
gave Cassano a rating of four out of ten. They
described him as quote limping and wheezing with every ball,
halfway to a blunder. Casano was again a sub as
Italy lost to Uruguay and embarrassingly crashed out of the
World Cup in the group stages, and that was the
(30:54):
end of Cassano's Italy career. Back with Botama, the club
was deep in relegation and financial peril. They couldn't pay
their players full wages for nearly a year. Casano left.
He rejoined some Dodi, but a year later he was
out of their plans. The new president told him to
quote get lost, so Casano joined newly promoted Elasberdona. He boasted,
(31:19):
there's nobody like me. In two months, I'll return and
you'll see. A week later, he announced that he was
retiring on his wife's social media accounts. A few hours later,
he recanted and decided to continue. Another week later, he
retired again, this time for good. He said the spark
simply wasn't there with Elasberdona, comparing it to when you're
(31:41):
with a woman and you realize you don't want to
spend time with her. So how do you sum up
a career like Casanos? His Italy teammate Andrea Pio wondered,
quote Casano claims to have slept with over seven women,
but he doesn't get picked for the national team anymore?
Can he be happy? He's somebody who's always kind of,
(32:02):
you know, nurtured this image of somebody who doesn't care
um and then also somebody who's had you know, he
made a bunch of mistakes, his ill discipline, and and
he's paid for it. But you know he's he's always
said that, you know, I had fun doing it. I
don't regret. I still made enough money that I can
lead a decent life, and I had a good time
along the way. What's not the light? In his memoir,
(32:25):
he wrote, I spent the first seventeen years of my
life dirt poor. Then I spent nine years living the
life of a millionaire. That means I need another eight
years living the way I do now and then I'll
be even Cassana's career for me is he is really
summed up by that. The celebrated instance we mentioned the
goal above all against d Intel, which which I have
(32:45):
a point of your career you scored at the beginning
of the middle of the end is an absolutely. I
mean that means you've had a pretty good career if
you scored a goal like that in it. After his career,
Casetto said he'd achieve half of what he could have,
which was his own fault. He admitted that he was
in the wrong of the time. He said, if I
had had another head on my shoulders, I could have
(33:07):
been playing on Mars. He played for some of the
best clubs on the planet. He fought with managers, referees,
club presidents or the police at every single one. He
never even got close to a Belonda, even using five
percent of his talents. He was able to have a
pretty extraordinary career with that, go with his time at
(33:27):
Roma at Real Madrid for goodness sake, So that just
shows you what a what an iceberg footballing ability there
was beneath the surface, which we never really got to say.
But I think one of the intriguing things about Antonio
Cassano is that the knowledge that you had ultimately squandered
your talent would be crippling, I think mentally for many
of us. But Cassano is completely untroubled by it. Was
(33:49):
Cassano really as regret free as he likes to come across.
Maybe I'm not, and what am I to judge? And
people are allowed to do whatever they want. But to me,
I just don't believe him when he says he doesn't
have regrets, you know, because you know what, apart from
the gorging yourself on food, you could have been one
of the best players in the world. Still had a
lot of sacks, eating all your pastries and creams, poffs
(34:12):
and the Claire's after you retire, or maybe just eating
less of them while you were playing. You could have
had that, and the fact that you didn't is down
to you. If I'm being honest, I believe it's something
that people tell themselves afterwards. But he knows, he knows
he could have been. He could have done so much more,
you know, and he wouldn't have had to give up
so many of the things that he enjoyed to be honest,
Apart from the Claire's precious Fews start with as much
(34:35):
natural talent as Antonio Casano, none has done so little
with it. The Best Soccer Podcast in the World is
a production of Exiled Content Studios in partnership with My
Hearts Michael podcast Network and is hosted by me nandel Villa,
produced by Exact Lee Rigg, written by Exact Lee Rigg.
(35:00):
Production assistants by Stella Emmett. Our executive producers are Isaac
Lee Rose Reed and myself namdo Vila. Our executive producers
at I Heart are Gisel Bances and Arlene Santana. Sound
designed by ba Are Awesome. Theme song is by lu
j Special Thanks to all the voices who participated in
this episode, Garrio Marcotti and James Richardson. For more podcasts,
(35:22):
listen to the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Francisco d'otti called him the best player he'd ever played with.
Rauru said he had never seen anyone like him. Bogenio Facitti,
the coach who gave him his debut, said players like
Antonio are born only once every thirty years. And in
his own words, he was a prima donna, problematic, fat,
disgusting and in the wrong ninety nine percent of the time.
(00:26):
This is the dichotomy of Antonio Cassano. The ultimate tale
of squandered talent is a little bit like that the
famous George Best story about what he did with his
money after his career. Manchester United winger George Best was
asked what had happened to his wealth. His reply quote,
I spent a lot of money on booze birds and
(00:46):
fast cars. The rest I just squandered. Cassano was cut
from the same cloth. He had a hole between the
a tree of his heart that would later cause a stroke,
and no amount of pastries or sex workers could fill it.
He was kind of the first sort of hip hop
Italian superstar, even using five percent of his talent. He
was a ridiculous athlete. He was incredible and it is
(01:08):
crazy to look bad think that he did so little
with all the talent, and all of a sudden people
are like, wow, it really felt like something extraordinary that happened.
He had acne a permanently in Susian grin. He was brash,
(01:30):
he was loud, tore his shirt off in frustration, and
Cassano ended up ended up prime. He's one of the
great figures of Italian football, but not one of the
great players. You could have been one of the best
players in the world. The knowledge that you had ultimately
squandered your talent, it's like, yeah, so what you have
a ferrari? I mean he had a career, right. You
(01:52):
can trace Santonio Cassano's career through his nicknames the Jewel
of Old Body, fant Antonio, Peter Pan, the boy who
refused to grow up, and later as he ate his
way through pastries and paychecks, Gorto from a once in
a generation talent through the pounds of nutella in Straight
from the Jar to a World Cup debut at thirty one?
(02:14):
Was his a tale of wasted talent or of a
boy saved from the streets and allowed to live the
lavish life of a millionaire. This is the best soccer
podcast in the world, and today we're talking the career
of Antonio Cassano goes with it, but it's still Christiano Ronaldo. Yeah, yeah,
(02:53):
never sin. I think it's fair to say that Cassano's
best goal was his first when he was only seventeen.
Cassano's playing for Body in the Deep South, Body who
(03:15):
are a fairly unglamorous provincial side way down at the
southern end of Italy. We should introduce our guests. My
name is James Richardson. I watched football and then I
talked about it and I asked questions about it, and
I do this for a series of places, but principally
I guess a podcast called the Totally Football Shot. I'm
Gabriel Marcotti. I'm a senior writer for ESPN. I'm also
(03:40):
the UK correspondent for the Italian sports daily Sport. The
goal came in Castano's second game as a professional, and
they're playing one of the top teams in city at
the time, in Ted Inted had Ronaldo, Christian Panucci, Clarence Didor,
newly crowned World Cup winner Longblong and the most expensive
transfer up to that point in history, Christian Viety. It
(04:09):
doesn't do stop, and the manager decides to throw on
a seventeen year old product of their Vivo their youth program,
who with think something like seventeen minutes to play. He
comes on and you often see this like names, you know,
they chuck on the local kid, hoping to that he
can do something with the enthusiasm of the crowd. But
(04:30):
he scores his phenomenal goal, proceeds to burst down the wing.
A long ball a bit of a hell Mary passes
sent up to him. He manages to kill it with
the back of his letter with with with his heel,
essentially and without breaking stride, races past a couple of
defenders and absolutely slams it passed into his goalkeeper and
everybody just completely loses it, and all of a sudden,
(04:52):
people are like, wow, he's mobbed by club officials. The
referee books him for running into the fans guess sort
of shrugs like how else am I supposed to celebrate that,
and gives the ref a side hug. That night, when
he drove home, the street was so crowded he couldn't
fit his car through. People brought offerings of pasta, olive oil,
(05:13):
bread and Champagne. He wrote, quote the day before I
had nothing to eat. Now I had enough food to
become obese. Our expectations were so high for Cassano. When
he scored that goal against Inter we immediately leapt on
a plane and went down to Barty. I was initially
at the time with basically making a show about the
Italian game for a UK audience, so we went straight
(05:35):
down there to kind of get to this phenomenon, to
kind of pay our respects at the you know, the
place where the shot star was probably gonna be shining
above it, with three wise men at the door. It
really felt like something extraordinary had happened. Cassano wrote, I
was almost Brad Pitt and all thanks to a back heel.
Football really can perform miracles. The next day, the Italian papers,
(05:56):
who have a certain ponchan for romanticizing figures, looked across
the fact that Cassano Cassano was born the day after
Italy won the eighty two World Cup, and it's clearly
his destiny to become the next great Italian player, which
as we now know, never really happens. He later wrote
that if it weren't for that goal against Ian, did
(06:16):
he would have gone on to become a thief or worse,
a delinquent. At any rate, Cassano grew up in poverty
in the San Nicola district of Badi Veka. This is
Old Barry, which is a fairly intimidating place if you're
not from there. I mean, at the time it was
it was famed as being the micro criminality center of
of Italy, you know, a petty crime, essentially an example
(06:38):
of his neighborhood. Years later, while visiting home, his Porsche
was stolen from out front of his mother's house. A
neighbor called into a local radio station and within twenty
four hours the car was returned, with a bouquet and
an apology no attached. I think it was interesting about
Cassano too, was his his personal story, which also kind
of captured the imagination single mom never knew his dad.
(07:01):
A lot of the people he grew up around, you know,
we're a lot of them had serious issues with the law.
I think he was kind of the first, certainly one
of the first Italian footballers where you know, you might
make a parallel with the old stereotype about the guy
from the rough neighborhood who goes on to play in
(07:22):
the NBA or the NFL, and but he's got friends
who were gangsters or whatever. Casana would play soccer on
the streets in the Old Town Square, running between park
cars to get the ball. They played until dusk until
the police came to break it up. Then they throw
tomatoes and eggs at the cops. He had repeated arrests
for driving a motorbike without a license or a helmet.
(07:45):
He started playing soccer for whoever would play him, sometimes
making two to three euros a day. That led to
his first youth contract with Body Young Casano at the time,
we're earrings, necklace, frosted tips. We're talking peak nineties here.
So physically in terms of the way that he looks,
not unlike if James Woods had had quite a sporting
(08:07):
but also quite given to chomping pizza's son, Cassano had
quite a similarity to the noted American actor, a stocky build,
not unlike Paul Gascoyne. Perhaps if you're familiar with him
when I first made him, and that's this is the
way I remember him. Somewhat kind of pop mark skin,
but you know, teenage skin issues and um, not a
(08:28):
mop but a kind of a crop, that's the word of,
sort of spiky ish blonde hair and a permanently insusient grin.
I would say, take that mischievous grin, his sheer, natural
ability and the goal, and soon enough Cassano was one
of the most coveted teenagers in Europe. Italy was famous
(08:48):
for not giving players a chance before they were into
their early twenties. So the fact that you could have
a seventeen year old coming on and then scoring a
goal like that was just it was truly remarkable. The
thing about Cassano as a player was that this when
he was young, before other stuff got on the way.
He was a ridiculous athlete. He was incredibly quick, and
(09:09):
he was incredibly strong, to go with this incredible creativity
that he had on the pitch and a really really
solid technical bass, and that's what got everybody excited. They said, like,
all right, you know you have these gifts. As soon
as you harness them, you know you're going to be
one of the best players in the world. And it
is crazy to look bad and think that he did
so little with all the talent, but we didn't know
(09:32):
that yet. Roma definitely didn't the reigning Syria champions, paid
the equivalent of thirty million euros to sign him, making
him the most expensive teenager in soccer up to that point.
It didn't matter that he was two hours late to
his meeting with the Roma president Franco Senzi. The talent
justified it. Cassano won the Young Syria Player of the
(09:53):
Year award twice at Roma and said his goal was
to win the ballon Dar. With his new increased wages,
Casano immediately bought a series of Mercedes sports cars, Ferrari
in a blue Ferrari for fifty six, owned by Gaffo.
He was too lazy to find an apartment, so initially
he moved in with club captain Francisco Dadi. There were
(10:15):
some wonderful scenes when he had his brief spell at
Roma with one of the other great natural Italian talents,
Francisco Totti, who very different personalities, but there was something
about the way that they liked to play football that
I guess was similar, because they could just link up
almost without any any need for looking at where the
other one was. There's one particular clip which has become
(10:38):
quite famous of essentially the two of them just progressing
up the field without any worry about the opposition or
any particular need for their teammates, just passing the ball
between themselves as they advanced the full length of the
pitch where their goal comes at the end of it.
That almost was beside the point. It was just so
magnificent to see these great jeneyve of the Italian game
just enjoying each other in such a fashion. And Cassano
(11:02):
would suggest things like, oh, you know, we got invited
to this party in this club tonight. They're like yeah,
but the clubs in Milan. It's like yeah, so what
you have a ferrari. So they leave at nine pm
for the fifty mile trip from Rome to Milan driving
speed limits should take you four and a half hours,
and they pride themselves and doing it in you know,
(11:24):
two hours, and then they get there and their party
and then we go back the other you know. These
are all the types of things that that he would do.
Cassano was nearly unmanageable. His coach at Roma was a
hard man pragmatist named Fabio Capello, famously stern from the
northeast of Italy Fruli, which with every kind of straight
(11:45):
laced and not given to talking at Cassano from the
opposite end of the country and in character terms of
complete opposite. But then maybe Capella was the kind of
guy that he needed to keep him on the straight
and narrow and off the donuts and nocturnal visitors got
Pillow invented an expression, Cassanta just means a stupid thing
(12:06):
that you did, a stupid thing that of the sort
that only Cassano would do. He would go a wall
with his phone turned off. He'd brought buckets of water
above doorways in the dressing room. He'd hired teammates underwear
when they showered. He swapped the salt and the sugar
in the cafeteria. Another occasion under Capello when he turned
up having had a driving accident when he didn't actually
(12:27):
have a license. He liked to steal the keys to
the back door during training camp and let in lovers
late at night. I've read that he was kind of
the first sort of hip hop Italian superstar, and the
reason for that is that there's something very regimented in
the Italian kind of production line of footballers. You get
picked up by a local club, but then you go
into the academy of the top club, and you know
(12:49):
you dressed a certain way. Preppy. You know, you train,
you go to school, you gotta stay in line all
the time, and you have to look a certain way
and so on. With Cassano, there was none of that.
I mean, he really didn't care. He had acne, he
had terrible acne, and he was proud of it. He
was brash, he was loud, you know, he he listened
(13:09):
to the rop and not good rap, as some of
his team mates, who were into inter Wrap pointed out.
And he didn't care. He played into this, this character,
this Casano character. More about what happened next after the break.
(13:30):
The first two years at Roma were patchy. He was
perplexed why they had paid all this money but didn't
automatically start hitting. In the final against a se Milan,
Casano got upset and made cuckold horns at the referee,
who understandably sent him off. Casano then trashed the dressing room.
But the talent was there too. It started to click.
(13:52):
In his third year at Roma two thousand three, Casino
started all but one league game and scored fourteen goals
in City uh plus another four goals in six we
Cup matches. He got booked just two times. One of
those came against Juventus, and this story is very Casano.
Before the game, he asked Capelo if he could destroy
(14:14):
a corner flag if he scored twice. Capeto said, sure,
scored twice and you can go ahead and reck all
four dude right. Combine asked to be cas I don't
want a penalty, and when tut He scored it to
put Rama to ahead, Casano scored it a coach in
the face with a water bottle. He then proceeded to
(14:34):
score two of his own delicate finishes past Juigi Buffon.
Casano then stripped off his shirt and kicked the living
crap out of that poor corner flag. It's snapped in half.
A perplexed looking berg Colina, the legendary referee, booked him
Roma one four nil. The night before, Casano had stolen
(14:55):
the keys to the training ground, start got to have
sex and returned at six am. That oft times when
it worked, and that only increased the frustration of what
you felt, because the idea of totty and him being
able to dialogue, as the Italians would say, with the
ball just felt like a level of football. We hadn't
really seen before both got the call to represent Italy
(15:15):
at euro two thousand and four. He was incredible. Cassano,
funny enough, had been that the one positive thing of
that Italy performance. It hadn't gone well for Italy, that
European Championship. You know, Italy will always live with with
(15:37):
a ton of regret. They were playing deeply defensive football
under their manager, Javanny Trumpetonio was a deeply defensive manager
about a very lovely man, and Cassano, who couldn't play
deeply defensive football, I mean under any circumstances, was as
a result, kind of the only really bright point of that. Initially,
he wasn't even supposed to start. Dotty played the first
(15:58):
game against Denmark and was expected to continue next to
Vieri and Asano Pio despite the nil nil draw, but
duty was suspended after the fact for spitting afterwards. So
it turns out Danish television had their own separate camera
(16:19):
which was trained purely on Talk To and the guy
who was man marking him, Christian Poulson, because they wanted
to do this sort of additional tactical piece about Poulson's
man marking job on Talk To this camera picks up
talk the spitting on Pulson. Then Cassano comes in. Um,
they play Sweden next, and they absolutely batter Sweden but
(16:43):
only score once. Hello, the top scorers at Euro two
thousand full Sweden came up against one of the mainst
defenses in world football. Agitate. Sweden scores the most incredible
equalizer through who else but slots on Ibrahemovich. This crazy
sort of hulked back. Ye all that you know, Nobody,
even to this day, you don't know how I went
(17:05):
in said that Freddy look back outside with a guilty
basset stop. That's done in I said that men Italy
needed to win the final group game against Bulgaria. If
they did, they'd progress, except if Sweden and Denmark finished
two too. Literally any other result would do combined with
(17:25):
an Italy win. It's deep into stoppage time and Italy
is still tied. Then in the fourth minute of injury time,
the ball trickles through to Cassano. You do, baby. I
just remember Cassano's face after he scored against Bulgaria, you know,
running back, being so excited. And then I was at
(17:47):
that game and then word comes through of what was
happening in the other game, and in the Sweden Denmark game,
or Denmark and Sweden finished two two. Italy we're out
because I ended up, ended up, crying, should be out
of you right somewhere. Cassano and returned to Roma, but
(18:19):
coach Capello didn't. Casano stormed out of a training session
before the season even began. In the first game back,
he got sent off for shoving an opponent to the ground.
His contract was winding down and neither side would budge
in the negotiations. He acted out as Roma churned through coaches.
He called one of them Luigi Denetti, not a man. Eventually,
(18:41):
Cassano even fell out with the source of the feud
was that they were both booked to a pierod a
TV show, and Cassano found out that got paid more.
I think many observers when he went to Rome and
everything seems set for him too. It looked like the
perfect stage, the perfect opportunity for him to do everything
you wanted. So the team was set up for him.
(19:03):
You had Capella, who was one of the most successful
Italian managers, You had Tottie by his side, and they
and everybody wanted it to work. And they wanted Cassano
at the sentiment and it didn't so that. I guess
if there was a heartbreaking moment where you felt this
story wasn't going to have the happy ending we thought
it was going to have, that was maybe it. But
you know, I mean, he had a career or right,
(19:24):
Cassano wrote, quote, after a year of arguing with everyone,
I left. He signed for Real Madrid for only five
million euros, a bargain since he only had half a
year left on his contract. For the unveiling, he quote
got up early at ten. You didn't just go to
Real Madrid. He goes to Real Madrid and shows up
wearing the most ridiculous cold I appreciate this as a podcast,
(19:46):
and I don't know you can't do that, but I
invite everybody just to google Cassano a Real Madrid colt
and look at what he was wearing with the gold
chains this and even know how you would describe what
the all he was wearing that that's very much in character.
Let's side. He was wearing a brown fur coat, a necklace,
silver earrings, and a silver ring on his pinky finger.
(20:09):
It started fine. He scored in his second game, but
was subb doubt anyway. This confused him. He rarely made
it the full ninety minutes, having shown up vastly overweight.
In one rare instance, when he completed a game, he
ate ten packets of potato chips on the train ride
home in full view of traveling journalists. He wrote that
(20:29):
his retirement goal was to get very, very, very fat.
I should probably explain where we're getting all of these
Cassano quotes from. In two thousand and ten, he wrote
an autobiography called Dicot I'll tell Everything, It's wild. The
book starts in the very first chapter he talks about
how you know when he retires. His plan is to
(20:51):
become fat, but like not fat like he is now,
but like obese, because he loves food so much and
he gets the sexual satisfaction from gorging himself on food.
Madrid started finding him for every Graham that he was overweight,
leading to the nickname Elrito or Little Thaddy. Nutella was
one of the team's sponsors. Each player received eleven pounds
(21:14):
a month. Casano ate it straight from the jar. He
gained over thirty pounds in just seven months in Madrid.
When he was around Madrid before games. They would stay
in this hotel the night before a game, and that
you weren't supposed to. He would always arrange for women
to come, but he was always make them go by
go by this his favorite pastry shop, and they would
(21:36):
bring boxes and boxes of pastries. And sometimes he said,
like sometimes I wouldn't even sleep with him. I just
said and eat, I need all the pastry. Casano claims
to have slept with six or seven hundred women, quote
sex and then food a perfect night. Overweight and out
of form, he was left off the Italy squad for
the two thousand and six World Cup by coach Marti.
(22:00):
Was he particularly missed for two thousand and six when
the roster was I don't think so. I think by then,
apart from the fact that Machello Lippi didn't have many
people who were ready to second guess him. His reputation
was so so high that you didn't have that usual
thing of people weighing in with their opinions or what
he should shouldn't do. And to consider that Cassano wasn't
(22:21):
quite the kind of player you needed for a World
Cup squad, a very specific kind of group of players
for a specific kind of objective. I don't think it
was that surprising to too many people. Italy won that
World Cup. Casano watched from home, just as he did
(22:42):
when Real Madrid won the league. The following season, his
old coach, Fabio Capello, joined Real Madrid, which offered Casano
a second chance, but he didn't take it. Before one game,
Casino called Capello quote more fake than monopoly money. TV
cameras Casino impersonating the coach to his laughing to teammates.
Casano was fined and separated from the team he was
(23:05):
I don't think he's particularly troubled by the fact that
his time at Real Madrid, the ultimate dream destination for
so many of the world's footballers, is chiefly notable for
his astonishing consumption of a donuts and being nocturnal visitors
at a top Real Madrid hotel. Casino only made seven
appearances and scored one goal that year. On the last
(23:26):
day of the season, while Real Madrid won the league
in dramatic fashion, he skipped the game and went back
to his house in Rome to watch with friends and
fifteen women. Casano claimed that he would walk back to
Italy to play for Roma again. Instead, he joined some
Dodia on loan. He lost twenty two pounds and celebrated
(23:47):
his first goal for the club by stripping off his
shirt to show off his new hot pod. Some Dodia
is a relatively midweight team in Italy which has only
won the league once. There, Casano formed a strike partnership
with jump Paolo Pazzini to fire them into the Champions League.
Cassano called club president Ricardo Gardo the father he wished
(24:07):
he had. He married a water polo player named Garina Martialis.
Things seemed to be turning around despite his uptakeing form.
Lippy again left Cassano off the two thousand and ten
World Cup roster, and Cassano, at the time was twenty
years old. He was back in Italy, he was scoring
goals by he was also getting injured quite a bit,
(24:29):
and he was also kind of Ubert Cassano. The problem,
I think the fundamental problem that the Italians took about
a reheated soup. It's basically it's getting back together with
your ex. It's just trying to do something that was
successful again. And Italy bizarrely went to Machella Lippi in
two thousand and ten. He went with many of the
same players, and incredibly lightning did not strike the second time.
(24:51):
Cassano's exclusion, I don't remember being the biggest thing of that.
Italy crashed out in the group stages. That's it, That
is it? What if they all time World Cup upsets
Slovakia ever going through Italian ignominy Slovakia on here. From
(25:13):
what I remember, you know, Lippy said, I want to
reward the guys who I trust and he shut the
door on him as then his successor, of course, who
was all very much touchy, feeling in touch with feelings
and stuff like that. He brought Cassano back, but I'm
nearly made a point to include Cassano in his first
(25:33):
starting lineup and built the team around him. Casano hadn't
scored for Italy since Euro two thousand and four. He
became Italy's leading scorer with six, firing them into Euro.
But and there he credited his marriage with calming him
down back at the club, though it was typical Cassano.
He got a five game ban and a fifteen thousand
(25:55):
euro fine for trying to fight a referee in a
game against Rino. Possibly the ultimate Cassan out is when
he offered the referee out and I'm not sure if
that expression means anything outside the UK, but when he
was at sam Doria he was deeply upset with a
refereeing decision, was sent off, tore his shirt off in frustrations,
(26:15):
flung it to the ground and started to make his
way down the tunnel, then decided against it, returned to
the field with various people trying to usher him back
out before he caused any more problems, and started screaming
at the referee that he would see him outside, you know,
to settle matters. He refused to attend an awards ceremony
and fell out with his father figure the club president.
(26:37):
A tribunal wouldn't let somebody terminate his contract, but they
did cut his wages in half. A solution came in
January of two eleven, in the form of a transfer
to a C Milan. Cassano called it the last chance
in his career and said that if he failed at
Milan he quote should be put in a mental hospital.
He joined in January and Milan won the league a
(26:59):
couple of months later. Then, at nine, he suffered a stroke.
In typical Casano fashion, he argued with the club doctor
about going to the hospital for an hour. Four days later,
he had heart surgery. Casano survived and returned to the field,
despite being only he started for Italy in euro alongside
(27:27):
another combustible talent in Mario. Cassano led Italy to the final,
where they lost heavily to Spain. All the celebrations can
start now. Spain champions of Europe for the second time
in a row, and this Golden generation has yet another trophic.
(27:52):
I like to think of Cassan. I think of a
Cassano and super Mario Balotelli playing up front, and I
get excited because they were players. They were incredibly flawed
personalities who you know, never lived up to their potential.
I mean, when you think about kindred spirits, balt and
Cassano have a certain amount of certain amount in common
(28:12):
in terms of the way they like to play, but
also the way they like to approach life. Cassano, I
think is the more devil may care by a considerable distance, which,
given that the other one is Balatelli, says a lot
about who Cassano is. When Milan sold some key players,
(28:33):
Cassano demanded out. They traded him. Weirdly enough, team did
for his old strike partner Pazzini after a year of
arguments with the coach there, and sent him to Part
of My Part of My President Domazzo gid out of
the admitted that people called him mad for signing Cassano,
but it paid off. Cassano desperately wanted to play in
(28:53):
a World Cup and one was coming up in two
thousand and fourteen in Brazil. In the spring, Saddle gave
himself a zero percent chance of making the roster. He
lost twenty pounds again his diet secret. He cut back
to eating foca only once a week. He scored twelve goals,
assisted six, led the league in key passes, and lifted
(29:16):
Bottoma into the European places. He begged Br'mdeli to take
him to Brazil and but I'm derely obliged. Once the
world's most expensive teenager a prodigy, Cassano would make his
World Cup debut aged thirty one. Obviously, that whole expedition
(29:37):
didn't work out. More about what happened next After the
break in the two thousand and fourteen World Cup. But
I'm Delli chose Bydelli to play alone up front, but
then he felt that he couldn't He couldn't afford to
play Casano together. You know, anecdotally people say, oh, I
(30:00):
can have one of these guys, not too so called
problem children, you know, when they're not performing. Casano came
on in the second match as a sub against Costa Rica.
Da Italy lost. One of the biggest newspapers in Italy
(30:26):
gave Cassano a rating of four out of ten. They
described him as quote limping and wheezing with every ball,
halfway to a blunder. Casano was again a sub as
Italy lost to Uruguay and embarrassingly crashed out of the
World Cup in the group stages, and that was the
(30:54):
end of Cassano's Italy career. Back with Botama, the club
was deep in relegation and financial peril. They couldn't pay
their players full wages for nearly a year. Casano left.
He rejoined some Dodi, but a year later he was
out of their plans. The new president told him to
quote get lost, so Casano joined newly promoted Elasberdona. He boasted,
(31:19):
there's nobody like me. In two months, I'll return and
you'll see. A week later, he announced that he was
retiring on his wife's social media accounts. A few hours later,
he recanted and decided to continue. Another week later, he
retired again, this time for good. He said the spark
simply wasn't there with Elasberdona, comparing it to when you're
(31:41):
with a woman and you realize you don't want to
spend time with her. So how do you sum up
a career like Casanos? His Italy teammate Andrea Pio wondered,
quote Casano claims to have slept with over seven women,
but he doesn't get picked for the national team anymore?
Can he be happy? He's somebody who's always kind of,
(32:02):
you know, nurtured this image of somebody who doesn't care
um and then also somebody who's had you know, he
made a bunch of mistakes, his ill discipline, and and
he's paid for it. But you know he's he's always
said that, you know, I had fun doing it. I
don't regret. I still made enough money that I can
lead a decent life, and I had a good time
along the way. What's not the light? In his memoir,
(32:25):
he wrote, I spent the first seventeen years of my
life dirt poor. Then I spent nine years living the
life of a millionaire. That means I need another eight
years living the way I do now and then I'll
be even Cassana's career for me is he is really
summed up by that. The celebrated instance we mentioned the
goal above all against d Intel, which which I have
(32:45):
a point of your career you scored at the beginning
of the middle of the end is an absolutely. I
mean that means you've had a pretty good career if
you scored a goal like that in it. After his career,
Casetto said he'd achieve half of what he could have,
which was his own fault. He admitted that he was
in the wrong of the time. He said, if I
had had another head on my shoulders, I could have
(33:07):
been playing on Mars. He played for some of the
best clubs on the planet. He fought with managers, referees,
club presidents or the police at every single one. He
never even got close to a Belonda, even using five
percent of his talents. He was able to have a
pretty extraordinary career with that, go with his time at
(33:27):
Roma at Real Madrid for goodness sake, So that just
shows you what a what an iceberg footballing ability there
was beneath the surface, which we never really got to say.
But I think one of the intriguing things about Antonio
Cassano is that the knowledge that you had ultimately squandered
your talent would be crippling, I think mentally for many
of us. But Cassano is completely untroubled by it. Was
(33:49):
Cassano really as regret free as he likes to come across.
Maybe I'm not, and what am I to judge? And
people are allowed to do whatever they want. But to me,
I just don't believe him when he says he doesn't
have regrets, you know, because you know what, apart from
the gorging yourself on food, you could have been one
of the best players in the world. Still had a
lot of sacks, eating all your pastries and creams, poffs
(34:12):
and the Claire's after you retire, or maybe just eating
less of them while you were playing. You could have
had that, and the fact that you didn't is down
to you. If I'm being honest, I believe it's something
that people tell themselves afterwards. But he knows, he knows
he could have been. He could have done so much more,
you know, and he wouldn't have had to give up
so many of the things that he enjoyed to be honest,
Apart from the Claire's precious Fews start with as much
(34:35):
natural talent as Antonio Casano, none has done so little
with it. The Best Soccer Podcast in the World is
a production of Exiled Content Studios in partnership with My
Hearts Michael podcast Network and is hosted by me nandel Villa,
produced by Exact Lee Rigg, written by Exact Lee Rigg.
(35:00):
Production assistants by Stella Emmett. Our executive producers are Isaac
Lee Rose Reed and myself namdo Vila. Our executive producers
at I Heart are Gisel Bances and Arlene Santana. Sound
designed by ba Are Awesome. Theme song is by lu
j Special Thanks to all the voices who participated in
this episode, Garrio Marcotti and James Richardson. For more podcasts,
(35:22):
listen to the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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