After seven years living intensely abroad, Fabio Cannavaro returns to be a protagonist on the Italian football scene.
From today the world champion and golden ball is the new coach of Benevento, called on the bench of the Samnites by the president Oreste Vigorito and the sporting director Pasquale Foggia, who courted him for a short time, since the proposal was immediately accepted. .
"For me, after seven years in which I worked outside - explains Cannavaro, who will be joined on the bench as deputy by his brother Paolo - it was time to go home. As soon as I received the proposal from Benevento, I didn't think for a moment. and I immediately decided to accept The Benevento project is a project I believe in.
For a coach, being able to work with peace of mind is the best and for this reason I immediately accepted this challenge: it is not easy, in Serie B this year there are many teams who want to go up, like us.
We will take the time we need. "
One of his team mates in the National team recently passed on the Benevento bench, Pippo Inzaghi who was one of the first to congratulate the new Samnite coach.
"This morning - says Cannavaro - Pippo Inzaghi called me and many other teammates of the National team.
He coached in Benevento, congratulated me on the job and spoke very well about the city and the club because his experience was fantastic. I hope to do like him, to get the same results, even if I know it won't be easy. Now you have to work: it's the only thing I know how to do and that I like. I hope that one day I will be appreciated by more as a coach than for what I did as a player. I know it's not easy but I'll try. "
His experiences as a player at Real Madrid and as a manager in China have served a great deal to increase his football knowledge.
Cannavaro knows this and confirms it.
"The experience I had abroad - he says - has certainly improved me, it has expanded my background. In Italy we have had great coaches in the past, our school is important but we must also look at what is happening elsewhere. In mine. career even outside Italy I met great coaches with different philosophies that changed football. When I was a player, for example, the experience in Spain taught me a lot. The approach to the game was strange, different. Music was used there and when it came to taking the field we were more concentrated, you have to experience football with joy as it happens abroad.
"People - he adds - must see that you give your best, that you want to win everything. People feel what you transmit on the pitch. It is up to us to drag them and make them come to the stadium, a semi-empty stadium is not nice to see and it's up to us to bring back the fans and get it filled. "
For him, who has won a world title as captain, the absence of Italy also from Qatar is a huge disappointment.
"Italy out of the World Cup twice in a row? We have been penalized - he observes - by the arrival of many foreigners, we have chased exotic names and lost our identity and this is a real drama from a sporting point of view. The truth is that for too long we have looked at the football of other countries such as Spain or England. We felt Spanish, English and instead we are Italian. We have lost our identity, everyone abroad is amazed ".
"It may seem unimportant not to play the world championships - concludes Cannavaro - but it is not. We have been world champions four times and it is very serious not to go there twice in a row. I do not have the recipe to solve this state of crisis but something will have to be done, we will have to change direction because what happened to
