How Cellino once accidentally sacked a coach — Mail 1/12/23

Chest-thumping, manager eating ex-Leeds owner Massimo Cellino on his love affair with the club and how he once accidentally sacked a coach when he asked to change the couch!

Massimo Cellino oversaw a hugely chaotic period when he was Leeds owner

The Italian - who now owns Brescia - sacked six managers in just three years

Manchester United in a mess - they have a collapse in them - It's All Kicking Off

By DAVID COVERDALE

For today’s lunch, the man they call the ‘Manager Eater’ settles for the local speciality of tagliolini with white truffle.

Then again, it has been just six days since he last chewed up a boss in Brescia — his 21st helping in six years. ‘It’s a very expensive meal,’ laughs Massimo Cellino about his insatiable and infamous appetite for hiring and firing coaches.

There is, though, a problem when we convene at Ristorante Nineteen in the centre of this tranquil Italian city, close to Lake Garda. And it has nothing to do with the food. ‘Why are you wearing that bloody colour?’ Cellino asks the woman sat by the front door as he walks in with Mail Sport.

The restaurant’s owner is wearing a purple jumper, a cardinal sin in the eyes of Cellino, who has — as anyone associated with him will know — a distrust of the colour, as well as the number 17. ‘They bring me bad luck,’ insists the 67-year-old maverick former Leeds owner, now running Brescia in Serie B.

Cellino has sold — or refused to sign — players born on the 17th day of the month. ‘I don’t want to take the risk,’ he says. ‘It is a sickness. I am not normal. I apologise for that.’

But it was his problem with purple — associated with funerals in Italy — that left him with a red face shortly after he arrived at Elland Road in January 2014.

‘I was a mess when I got there,’ he admits. ‘My English was very poor. My pronunciation was terrible. When I got there, there was a velvet bloody couch in the suite at Elland Road. It was purple. I said, “Change the bloody couch, I don’t want to see it anymore”. And then they fired the bloody coach!’

Brian McDermott was the coach sent on his way while the velvet couch stayed put. It left Leeds without a manager the night before a home Championship match with Huddersfield. ‘They said, “Who is taking the team tomorrow?”,’ recalls Cellino. ‘I said, “Why? We don’t have a manager?”. They said, “You fired him”. “I fired the manager? S***”.

‘It was 10 at night and there were 2,000 people at the stadium who wanted to kill me. They hid me in the stadium and then took me out in a police car. They said, “It is better if you don’t go to the game tomorrow”... Bloody purple!’

Nigel Gibbs, McDermott’s assistant, ended up in caretaker charge and oversaw a 5-1 win. ‘I said “keep him!”’ recalls Cellino. ‘Sometimes the big mistake becomes the best thing you do. That’s bloody football.’ Instead, McDermott was reinstalled as boss by GFH Capital, who remained in control while their 75 per cent sale to Cellino awaited EFL approval. But the madness had only just begun.

While McDermott survived the rest of the season, Cellino — who initially failed his owners’ test but got the decision overturned that April — sacked him in the summer. His replacement? Dave Hockaday, whose only previous managerial role had seen him lose his job at non-league Forest Green.

‘I didn’t know who to appoint,’ confesses Cellino. ‘I had to take someone to do pre-season. I was lost — and I took the coach with the lowest wages. I’ll never forget. We were playing Middlesbrough and it was 0-0. Then Hockaday took out (Souleymane) Doukara, who was playing good and he put in a midfielder, which was a brave move. We won 1-0.

‘After the game, I said, “Hey, Hockaday, give me five, you are better than I thought. You took one striker away and put another one in midfield to control the game. That’s something the best coaches understand not the worst”. Then you know what he told me? “I took out Doukara because he was injured”. I said, “So you’re s*** still!”.’

Hockaday was gone 12 days later after an ignominious six-game reign. Others lasted little longer. In fact, Hockaday was one of seven permanent bosses Cellino got through in his three years at Leeds. History is now repeating itself at Brescia, while in 22 years in charge of first club Cagliari, Cellino went through 36 coaches, earning him his Mangia Allenatori (Manager Eater) moniker.

So when did he become such a serial sacker? ‘I had a trauma,’ he explains. ‘1999-2000, I was in Cagliari and I had a team to get into the first three in Serie A. I signed a coach (Renzo Ulivieri) who was a nice person. The supporters screamed against him at all the games, but I liked a lot this man. We lost games, we were going bad. I should change the coach. I didn’t do it because I felt so sorry for him.

‘We were then relegated. At that time, I said, “Never again. I have to look after the team, not my personal feelings”. Sometimes I do it faster than I should do. Sometimes I don’t even have the guts to call them myself and say they are fired because I am ashamed. I don’t like it. But the bigger damage is not changing the coach.’

It is typical of Cellino, then, that when asked if there is any manager he regrets sacking, he insists his only regret is that he did not fire one more. ‘If I was 100 per cent in charge of Leeds United in 2017, I would have sacked the coach (Garry Monk) to bring Leeds straight to the Premier League,’ he says. ‘He wasn’t a good person. That was a big problem with Leeds that year.’

That was the year that Cellino ceded half of his Elland Road empire to Andrea Radrizzani. At the end of the 2016-17 campaign, Radrizzani bought out his fellow Italian to take full ownership.

‘I thought it was in his interest to carry on together,’ says Cellino. ‘But he wanted to buy all the club. He did it and then after two months he sent me a message saying, “I made a big mistake, I have been such a fool”.

‘You know, when someone is short, they like to show they are stronger. They like to win all the time. Sometimes you have to draw. You have to accept that someone is better than you and try to get along.’

Leeds finished seventh that season, one place outside the play-offs. Cellino is scathing of Radrizzani’s decision-making in their six months of co-ownership and even suspects he did not want the Whites to go up so he could buy them outright on the cheap.

‘We had one price to buy the 50 per cent in the Championship and a different price in the Premier League,’ he says. ‘So in his mind he said, “It’s better if we don’t go up because I take the 50 per cent for less money and the year after I go straight up. It’s very easy”. But they don’t know football. He sold everyone, because Andrea liked to sell and buy players. Football is not that. That’s why I call them amateurs. They are dangerous.’

Cellino also blames Radrizzani for the club’s relegation from the Premier League last season. The media mogul has since sold his stake in Leeds to 49ers Enterprises, and now co-owns Sampdoria, who visit Brescia in Serie B on Sunday. Cellino, you suspect, will not be rolling out the red carpet.

‘I think he tried to do good but he wasn’t good enough to run Leeds,’ he concludes on his successor.

But what about his own Leeds legacy? Cellino is, unsurprisingly, more positive about it than Whites fans, who would describe his tenure as one of the worst and weirdest in the club’s history.

‘I still don’t know if it happened or it was a dream,’ he says. ‘It was a big, big challenge for me. I was trying to run an English club my kind of way. Maybe it was a mistake, but I am not dishonest. I never did anything wrong, at least not on purpose.

‘When I bought Leeds, I couldn’t sleep one hour at night because it used to lose £100,000 a day. It lost £32million in a year. There were too many costs. But the first year, I closed with £8m loss. Second season, I broke even. Third season, I brought the club positive.

‘I had some problems when I was at Leeds because I am a very fighting man. I like to argue with people. I had some problems with the FA. They didn’t like me very much. But I had a good time. I had a beautiful experience. I am just sorry that I didn’t bring Leeds into the Premier League. Never mind. It was my fault. No one else’s.’

Cellino was so unpopular at Leeds that fans once even protested his regime with a fake funeral to mourn the ‘death of the club we fell in love with’, complete with a coffin. Asked if he has a message for supporters, he performs the Leeds salute of a thump to his chest and says ‘MOT’, the abbreviation of club anthem Marching On Together.

‘I’ll never forget,’ adds Cellino. ‘I love Leeds. I still miss Leeds. I miss Yorkshire, I miss Yorkshire Tea, Yorkshire puddings. I still watch Leeds matches. They are the first result I look out for. Last year was terrible. Jesus. But they will go up again.’

Returning to his office in the heart of the city, Cellino stops to point out the building a few yards down the road. ‘There is the court,’ he says. ‘I chose the wrong place!’

Others would argue his close proximity to the Palazzo di Giustizia (Palace of Justice) is rather handy, given how often he is called there. Most recently, he had more than £50million worth of assets seized amid an investigation into alleged tax crimes.

However, the agriculture magnate – nicknamed the King of Corn – brings news. He has just been cleared of the latest allegations against him. ‘Yesterday, not guilty in the high court,’ reveals Cellino, who has previously been convicted for fraud and false accounting. ‘I have done nothing wrong. I am sorry for who hates me or thinks that people can’t have success without stealing. In Italy, if you have success, you are a dishonest person. That’s the mentality.

‘I shouldn’t have come back here. But I couldn’t stay in England without Leeds. I had to run away. It’s like when you get divorced. You need to start seeing other women otherwise you’ll never forget the one before!’

Back in Cellino’s office, a figurine of the Virgin Mary has pride of place. He is deeply religious and once got a local priest to ‘bless’ the Elland Road centre circle and dressing room with holy water, in a bid to end an eight-month run without a home win.

‘I believe in God very much, so I think sometimes, when you see something negative, you try and make it positive,’ he explains. ‘I don’t think it hurts anyone to bring a priest in.

‘As soon as he blessed, a lot of black crows flew away from the stadium. I said, “This is not a joke, this is not a movie”.’

Leeds went on to win their next home match against Cardiff.

We move along the corridor to the Brescia boardroom, where two shirts hang proudly on the wall – those of Robert Baggio, who ended his career at the club, and Sandro Tonali, who started out here.

‘He used to sit here with me,’ Cellino says of Newcastle and Italy midfielder Tonali. ‘He spoke with me more than his father. I brought him up.’

Cellino cannot fathom how the young player he helped nurture has come to be banned from football for 10 months for illegal betting. ‘I still cannot say that Tonali could do anything wrong,’ he says. ‘If Tonali is bad, I dread thinking about the other players worldwide. If he was with me, I would have worked to stop it. But a lot of money causes too many wrong people around you.

‘In England, they should protect him more because he’s done nothing wrong when he was in England. Why does he have to pay from English football for something he made before when he was a baby, three years younger?’

Talk of former Brescia players brings us on to Mario Balotelli, who joined his hometown team for a season after they won promotion to Serie A in 2019. Mere mention of the ex-Manchester City striker, though, makes Cellino visibly irate.

‘I like to not talk about him,’ he says. ‘It’s lunchtime, my stomach is very weak. He’s not worth even to spend one minute talking about him. For me, he doesn’t exist. It’s been a bad dream and I want to wake up. It’s a nightmare.’

Cellino is understood to have terminated Balotelli’s contract after he failed to return to training when Serie A resumed after the Covid shutdown in 2020. Earlier that season, Cellino was accused of making a racist remark about Balotelli when, asked why he had been dropped, he said: ‘He’s black and he’s working to whiten himself.’ Brescia later claimed their chairman had been ‘misunderstood’ and was joking. ‘They can do what they want to make me seem racist but I am not racist,’ Cellino says now.

He also denies another story that, when his then boss Pep Clotet was sent to the stands during a match against Cremonese in February 2021, he took his place in the dugout. ‘I am crazy but not that crazy!’ insists Cellino. In fact, he thinks his craziest times might be behind him as he begins to consider life outside of the football madhouse.

‘Now I am getting old, I don’t feel my energy is as strong as it used to be,’ he admits. ‘I would like to bring this club to Serie A again but sometimes I think I am not good enough anymore. I have to accept that there are young people who will be better than me now. Football is changing too much and I don’t want to change.

‘That’s why I like England. They protect their history. I hope England is never going to change like that. England invented football and England has to save football. I will retire to England to enjoy English football.’

Cellino’s wife and daughter still live in London and he gained British citizenship last year. Would he ever buy another club in England? ‘I wish I could but I’m not rich enough,’ he adds. ‘I don’t want to come to make any more mistakes.’

Whisper it quietly, but the Manager Eater might be having his last supper.