Massimo Cellino's Leeds mad house! - Mail 22/9/22
Massimo Cellino's Leeds mad house! The Italian owner's foul-mouthed temper tantrums left staff in fear, he banned the No 17 and colour purple... and once rejected chance to sign Virgil van Dijk!
Graham Bean says working at Leeds under Massimo Cellino was
a madhouse
The controversial former owner would often erupt into severe
temper tantrums
Cellino ordered Paddy Kenny to be sold due to a superstition
over the number 17
The Italian once said that future England star Kalvin
Phillips wasn't good enough
By GRAHAM BEAN FOR THE DAILY MAIL
Graham Bean was the FA’s ‘sleazebuster’ but also worked with
a number of clubs in English football, most memorably at Leeds where he worked
closely with the club’s controversial former owner…
Massimo Cellino’s reputation preceded him when he bought
Leeds United. The controversial Italian businessman was known as the ‘Manager
Eater’ in his homeland after going through more bosses in his 22 years at
Cagliari than he’d had pepperoni pizzas, and it felt like he revelled in the
notoriety.
I found myself parachuted into the eye of the storm inside
Elland Road. Cellino had no experience of the English game and had already
sacked the CEO and head of football administration within weeks of seizing
control of the club. In effect, the club was rudderless.
Staff morale was the lowest I’d ever seen during my career.
They didn’t like Cellino — and certainly didn’t trust him. They feared the
consequences of getting on the wrong side of him. I once suggested he invest
£50,000 into the staff wages budget to give them all a pay rise, seeing as they
hadn’t had one in years, it would have given them a lift and made them more
receptive to what he was doing in the club. Cellino shot me down in his usual
tantrum manner, questioning why he should give them extra money.
Having bluntly refused my request he then asked about
sourcing an Audi R8 sports car for his son’s birthday, as I had already secured
a Mini for the same son some weeks earlier. He told me he was willing to pay up
to £80,000! He wouldn’t share £50,000 between all those who worked so hard for
him at the club, but would blow £80k on a vanity project for his spoiled and
indulged son. It summed him up perfectly.
My first meeting with Cellino had been an eye-opener. The
first thing he did was take the p*** out of my weight, with a string of
insulting comments. This went down like a lead balloon but it was clear he was
a very charismatic man with a brazen sense of humour. As the weeks and months
went by it became blindingly obvious he was prone to serious mood swings and
would frequently lose his temper, sometimes over the most trivial of matters.
Then, almost immediately, he could turn the charm on again. It was like
flicking a switch, so me and the other members of staff became very wary of his
irrational side.
Working at Leeds was one of the most bizarre experiences of
my professional career. At times it genuinely felt like I was working inside a
madhouse and I seriously questioned continuing to work for him, due to his
nasty temper tantrums, which were like dealing with a spoiled child. It was
draining and stressful.
However, I quickly learned the only way to deal with him was to stand up to him and give as good as you got. He once blamed me for a costly mistake regarding a loan deal for Souleymane Doukara from Catania. He was ranting and raving but I’d not had any involvement in it. I snapped — it was one rant too many from him — and launched myself across the desk with my finger pointing close to his face, shouting “Don’t you ever f****** blame me for something that’s nothing to do with me. You f***** this up and nobody else.” Cellino s*** himself, quickly backed down and ended up blaming someone else!
Due to his volatile temper, it was difficult to separate
when he was simply expressing himself with his passionate Italian personality
and mannerisms and when he was actually losing his temper. But as time went on
it was much easier to distinguish between the two.
I was the only person prepared to stand up to him, because
everyone else at the club lived in fear of him. His temper was such that he
would become irrational at times, raising his voice to the point of not being
able to decipher what he was saying, building himself up into such a frenzy he
would start frothing at the mouth.
He would be rude to many people without realising it, using
offensive language, with his most common phrases being “mother******” and
“****head.” Whenever I raised issues with him regarding the FA, his standard
response was “F*** the Federation”, a sentiment I tended to agree with most of
the time!
One of the biggest problems working for Cellino was that he
didn’t seem to do mornings. He rarely turned up at Elland Road before
lunchtime. This meant you were restricted in what you could actually get done,
because his micromanagement was so intense that no one at the club dare do
anything which might have caused an outburst from him.
He also had some weird and wonderful superstitions, like eliminating the number 17 from the club and not using the colour purple. One day he even told me to make sure I got high-earning goalkeeper Paddy Kenny out of the club because he was born on the 17th and that he just couldn’t risk him being at Leeds.
When I arranged the delivery of the Mini for his son,
Cellino refused to allow it to be delivered on a Friday, because “Friday was a
bad luck day for delivering cars”. Like I said, a madhouse.
A month after I joined Leeds, Cellino stunned club
supporters by appointing the relatively unknown Dave Hockaday as the new
first-team coach. Hockaday’s managerial experience amounted to being a youth
coach at Watford and Southampton, then four years of being manager of Forest
Green Rovers when they were in the National League. From his first day it was
obvious to me it would all end in tears.
I got on well with Dave and he was a really nice bloke, as
was his assistant Junior Lewis, but the reality was they were both out of their
depth at Leeds. Dave did, however, identify two outstanding players that would
have transformed the club.
One was a certain Virgil van Dijk, then at Celtic.
Unfortunately Cellino ignored him and signed Giuseppe Bellusci on loan from
Italian Serie B side Catania. Known as “The Warrior” in his native Italy
because of the way he played, Bellusci thrived on an undeserved hard-man
reputation. He made his debut in a 4-1 defeat to Watford and things didn’t improve
much from there — he wasn’t liked by many of his teammates or the club staff.
The other target Dave suggested was Andre Gray but instead,
Cellino sanctioned the signing of Mirco Antenucci from Ternana, who lasted just
two seasons. Hockaday had identified two players that, had Cellino chosen to
sign, would have seen Leeds make a huge profit in due course and may even have
resulted in promotion.
I knew Hockaday wouldn’t last very long — and I was correct.
After just 70 days he and Lewis were sacked. Cellino rang me and all he said
was, “Sack Hockaday”.
I replied that he should do the decent thing and speak to
Dave himself but Cellino “didn’t like confrontation” so refused to do it.
Most normal club owners would have done the sensible thing
and lined up a replacement manager before sacking their current one but Cellino
was far from normal. In effect, he was playing a real life game of Football
Manager.
That same evening I was summoned to his office where he
asked me who I thought we should appoint. I made it clear I was having no input
and so Cellino decided there and then that he wanted Steve Clarke as the next
boss. Clarke wasn’t interested so immediately, Cellino resorted to Plan B and
decided he wanted Paul Clement, who was assistant to Carlo Ancelotti at Real
Madrid. Cellino made the call to Ancelotti and wanted to know what Clement’s
salary was. When Ancelotti told him it was over one million euros a year, talks
ended very quickly!
Cellino then reverted to Plan C, which was to put academy
manager Neil Redfearn in temporary charge while he sourced a permanent boss.
Remarkably, given the talent brought through at Leeds such
as Lewis Cook, Charlie Taylor, Sam Byram, Bailey Peacock-Farrell, Alex Mowatt
and Kalvin Phillips, Cellino had initially been intent on closing the academy
down before he was convinced it was a viable concern.
Cellino had told Redfearn during one of his spells in charge
of the first team to get rid of future England international Phillips because
he “wasn’t good enough”. It shows just how poor Cellino’s judgment was over
players.
With Redfearn in temporary charge, Cellino reverted to Plan
D which was Gary Megson. I knew Gary well and set up a meeting at Cellino’s
apartment in Leeds city centre the following day. However, about an hour before
the meeting, Cellino rang to say he’d changed his mind and didn’t want Gary
after all, so it was all cancelled. It was another example of how farcical
things were becoming.