Right kids, what follows is a true story. As I tell it, you’ll doubt that but, honestly, all of these things really happened.
Let’s start with the season as a whole. It’s 2012-13 and we were ropey. Martin O’Neill’s side had picked up only three points from the previous eight games. I don’t know if any of you can imagine this, but we were fairly strong defensively but relied on wingers and midfielders to score goals as our strikers just weren’t hitting the target.
Newcastle had qualified for Europe, had a billionaire owner and thought they were better than everyone else even though, when you looked closely, they had spent big on five or six players with some mediocre players filling the gaps. They were tired from their European games and had hit a bad run of form which pulled them down the league, much to everyone’s pleasure except their own. Their cocky English manager was feeling the pressure and had started blaming referees for everything. Again, I know this is hard to picture, but try.
A slightly spoiler here. The league finished with us in 17th on 39 points and Newcastle 16th on 41. We were both saved because… no really this happened… Wigan won the FA Cup. They were so happy to get to the FA Cup final that it became their only focus and they only picked up one win in the league after March. And one at Wembley, scoring the only goal of the game in the 91st minute against Man City. Their manager left and went on to manage Belgium and the chairman left and told his grandson to take over. Madness.
Anyway, let’s stick with the North East’s own batshit craziness…
So the season was rubbish and we needed points urgently to stay up so we sacked O’Neill and appointed Paolo Di Canio. The appointment was so shocking, the vice-chairman resigned. David Miliband (yes, the politician) became Sunderland vice-chair shortly after losing the labour leadership election to his brother. His objection to Di Canio was not his reputation from his managerial reign at Swindon (which was tumultuous to say the least) but was his politics. You see, Paolo was a fascist. Now, these days people get upset if you call a fascist a fascist without evidence so, alongside photos of him sharing nazi salutes with the Lazio ultras, he attended the funeral of a fascist leader in Italy, is described by his own biographer as a fascist and has a tattoo of Mussolini on his back alongside the Imperial Eagle adopted by Hitler to represent the Nazi party. Other than that, it’s up for debate.
Anyway, in he came, a man who had, during his playing career, scored arguably the finest volley I’ve ever seen, caught a ball when he had an easy goal scoring chance because the keeper was injured and it wouldn’t have been fair and, in disgust at a referee sending him off, had pushed him to the ground resulting in an eleven-match ban. Honestly, I’m not joking, YouTube these things, they’re amazing (and in the ref push video, note that Paul Alcock deserved a yellow for the way he went down and watch for Nigel Winterburn wetting himself when he thinks Di Canio is going to kill him, cracks me up every time).
The mad fascist (fact/allegedly) turns up at Sunderland the day after we’ve sacked, well, basically your favourite Grampy and although he lost the first game against Chelsea, the second game was away at St James Park and we were strangely optimistic. Earlier in the season we’d drawn 1-1 with them at the Stadium of Light with an own goal by a dodgy footballer who kept getting picked but no one understood why called Ba, people were so desperate to see this game that our suspended midfielder, Craig Gardner, travelled with the Sunderland fans and sat in the away end. It was going to be fiery. It was going to be mad.
Oh, I almost forgot, the two managers hated each other. Some weird cockney, who blew ‘pretty bubbles’ better crap. Their handshake before the game angered Pardew as Di Canio playfully smacks him across the head and refuses to let go of his hand.
Anyway, I’m meant to be writing about a game of football here. So, briefly, Sessegnon, runs through, no one tries to tackle him and he belts it into the corner, 1-0, Di Canio looks like he’s focussing on not going mad and running down the touch line to join in, then we get a second, I forget who scored, and Di Canio can’t hold it in. He’s off, knee slide in an expensive suit and one of the most vivid images I have from any derby game. Late on in the game, David Vaughan scores. Now, to steal one of Peter Crouch’s best lines, what would Vaughan have been if he wasn’t a footballer? A virgin. And I’m being nice to him because, to be honest, he wasn’t really a footballer. But somehow it was one of those days and he puts it in the postage stamp from about 20 yards. Di Canio looks like a Thunderbird whose puppeteer is having a sneezing fit. No one can believe it. 3-0. And to make it better, he was offside. But it wasn’t given. Unlike Cisse’s goal for Newcastle which wasn’t given despite not being offside (if you’re still on YouTube find Pardew’s celebration towards Di Canio of this non-goal, its pure poetry).
A week later we beat Everton at the Stadium of Light as fans sang Di Canio’s name at the final whistle (honestly, YouTube that as well, he does the usual managerial celebration then takes a moment by himself as the PA provides the music for the fans to serenade him) and we felt we were probably safe.
This whole story reads like a badly made film, too unbelievable to be accepted, but it happened, honestly. And I’ve got two more things to add in that are, in some ways the maddest of them all. After the game at St James’ Park, the Newcastle fans were rioting and the police charged them on horses. One Newcastle fan decided to start a fight with a horse and punched it square on the jaw before being arrested. And what of Di Canio? Well, he was sacked after the players went to the board and said he was picking on them. One of their examples of his mindless barbaric cruelty… he wouldn’t let them have tomato ketchup.
Honestly, Sunderland v Newcastle, you couldn’t make it up.
