"De Canio bringing tactics - and tact - to QPR"

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Barney Ronay/Guardian Blog - De Canio bringing tactics - and tact - to QPR
The English game's 'other Italian' is quietly adapting to 'Anglo-Saxon football' and giving the nouveau riche at Loftus Road a right royal makeover

Luigi De Canio's arrival at QPR in October is providing one of this season's more intriguing sub-plots. It's a measure of the extraordinary events further up the club hierarchy since August that the arrival of the cheerful and deeply personable man from Matera rates as no more than a sub-plot in the turbulence at Loftus Road.

Appointing De Canio was one of the first significant acts of Rangers' new billionaire owners, formula one tycoons Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore, who were joined in December by an even bigger hitter, Lakshmi Mittal, the world's fifth richest man and owner of 80% of the world's steel (plus 20% of QPR). Suddenly Rangers could claim to be the world's wealthiest club. Briatore's ex-girlfriend Naomi Campbell was spotted in the Loftus Road stands. The squad were given £3,000 gold-plated Techno watches as a thank you for improved performances. De Canio, previously coach of 10 clubs from Italy's top two tiers, found himself pitched in the centre of an extraordinary football project.

Three months on there are other, if less sensational, reasons to talk to De Canio. The Football League's only Italian manager has been in office long enough to get some measure not just of the Championship, where Rangers have edged clear of the relegation spots, but of English football in general. And with Fabio Capello preparing to whittle his first England team from the driftwood of the Steve McClaren era, an Italian manager in English football seems like an object of particular interest right now.

Italian football provides the most obvious role model for an English game struggling to construct a working vision of its future. The top tiers of the Italian league are host to at least as many foreign players as the Premier League and the Championship. And yet Italy succeeds, not just in bringing through young talented players, but in producing World Cup winners. How do they do it? And can we copy them?

"Yes, of course, the World Cup," De Canio sighs, with obvious pleasure. "But the difference over here isn't so huge as you like to think. I notice that young players are also brought through in England and put into the professional game as soon as possible."

De Canio believes Italy's success with its young players - he points to his country's dominant record in European Under-21 competition - is a result of more rather than less exposure early in their careers. "The difference probably lies in the pressure that is put on these players, which - from the media and the fans - is much greater in Italy than in England. From a much younger age, Italian players are required to have formed themselves, whereas in England they are given more time."

Despite English football's much-trumpeted internationalism, there was something excitingly old school about De Canio's arrival. The Premier League has had at least a decade to inure itself to the culture shock induced by the appearance of foreign players and coaches. The Championship is different: virginal territory for the itinerant foreign manager. De Canio however is keen to stress that he is settling in very nicely: no culture clashes here, just a process of assimilation.

On the training pitch he certainly looks like a man at ease in his surroundings. Carrying his 50 years lightly, he talks to his squad in English, retrieves balls and referees a practice match with a pernickety intensity. As the players troop off he has a playful wrestle with Rangers' six-foot striker Patrick Agyemang. Still, it's tempting to ask about the usual sticking points in these cross-cultural experiments: the booze, the hamburgers, the late-night team bonding sessions. Some foreign managers have felt the need to introduce rules about this kind of thing.

"No. Not here. I believe good professionals should know what they can and can't do to give themselves the best chance. I've been very tolerant and respectful. As long as there are no situations we will carry on like this."

If anything has come as a surprise it's the frequency with which one game follows another. "You play most Tuesdays as well as every Saturday. This doesn't allow the players to train as I'd like. You can't work on specific skills. It's not the amount of games, just how quickly they follow. But more and more it's the same situation in Italy, particularly with the clubs in the Champions League. The players just have to put up with it."

Ah yes, the players. If this is all new for De Canio, it's worth remembering that he too is something of a novelty. Most of his squad have never worked with a foreign coach. Fitz Hall has described him as "the most tactical coach I've had", which suggests the Italian is doing something different to whatever black magic Hall's previous managers Gordon Strachan, Iain Dowie and Paul Jewell practised on the training pitch. "The players, both the ones who have just arrived and the ones who were here before, have all been very serious and very attentive," he says. "Right from the start they have been with me and followed me. I'd like to thank them for that."

It's not unusual to hear praise for the spirit in any group of English footballers. But what about the nuts and bolts of basic skills and technique? English football tends to be hard on itself when it comes to this kind of thing. "No, I wouldn't say there was any particularly huge difference between English and Italian footballers," he says. "No great difference at all. Every team does have its own identity and that can sometimes be related to the country they are playing in."

De Canio maintains that his players have similar skills to those at an equivalent level in Italy. "I don't think there are many huge technical differences. The difference is mainly in our interpretation of the game. Latin football, Italian football, has maybe a bit more fantasy to it. But you mustn't confuse fantasy with technique. The Anglo-Saxon football, the one that's played in northern Europe, is maybe a bit more linear. But you mustn't confuse this directness with a lack of technical quality."

This represents a more balanced - and certainly more favourable - appraisal of the virtues of the traditional British game than we are accustomed to hearing on these shores. De Canio has some even better news too. "I do believe that there is nothing to stop these two types of football being united," he says. "And if that should happen it would actually be a very good result."

This seems like a good moment, with the necessary apologies, to bring up Capello. Since the identity of the new England manager became clear, De Canio - "the other Italian" - has been asked frequent questions about his compatriot's prospects. While not a close friend, Capello is a familiar adversary from De Canio's days in Serie A. "I really hope he succeeds. And I honestly think he will. This is a nation with great footballing history. It would be wonderful if England could win something as they deserve."

And that synthesis of north and south? The fantasy and linear, Italian and English? "Well I would say there are big differences between managing a club and managing a national team. Maybe on some level it would be harder transmitting a new ethos and a new way of playing the game in a national team. It's a different form of training. You have one week maybe," he shrugs.

De Canio won't be drawn on whether he thinks Capello will try to play Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard alongside each other again, or whether he'll like the look of John Terry as captain when the Chelsea defender returns to fitness. But then, this is a man who has received a crash course in toeing the diplomatic line. QPR's training ground is in the shadow of Heathrow airport, close enough to the international exit hatch to chime with the unfortunate air of transience hanging over the Loftus Road project. This is something the manager - brought in as a late second choice to oversee the launch stages - was never going to escape entirely. In the eye of a peculiar kind of storm, De Canio has quietly begun to turn things around at Rangers. The other Italian can only hope for something similar at Wembley on Wednesday night.
Guardian