On this day in 2013, Sunderland turned to Paolo Di Canio to fill the vacant managerial seat - a left field move for a far right man. The appointment was met with some condemnation, notably from David Milliband who was then involved with SAFC. He resigned from his post and the appointment evoked disgust from the Durham Miners Association, who threatened to remove a banner from our ground.
On the pitch, the appointment also looked a strange one – Di Canio had only managed at League Two and League One level. He did a decent job at Swindon, but this was often overshadowed by the antics of the insane Italian. He is a walking advertising board for a violent ideology at odds with Sunderland’s politics broadly speaking, his body adorned with tributes to Italian fascism, the ‘DUX’ tattoo on his bicep leading to his dismissal from Sky Sports Italia.
Anyone with tattoos celebrating dictator Benito Mussolini is bound to have psychological, let’s call them quirks, which will carry over and define his management style. At Swindon, he had run an almost totalitarian regime, creating a gruelling training pattern which instilled a work ethic probably unmatched in English football, but at the cost of alienating many players.