from the book
"Capello had wanted me for a long time,
and sure, absolutely, Moggi was the director. But you don't mess around with Capello either. That guy
can floor any star with just a stare. Capello is really tough"
"Fabio Capello, maybe the most successful coach in Europe the last ten years, was calling for me, and I
thought: What have I done now? All the anxiety from my childhood came back, and Capello could make
anyone nervous. Wayne Rooney has said that when Capello walks past you in the hall, it kind of feels like
you’re dead, and it’s true. He used to just take his coffee and pass you without a look, and it was almost
scary. Sometimes he muttered “ciao”. Other times he just disappeared, and it felt like you hadn’t even
been there"
"Capello had an assistant named Italo Galbiati. Galbiati was an older man, I called him Old man. He was
cool. He and Capello are a little bit of bad cop, good cop. Capello tells you the hard, tough things whilst
Galbiati takes care of the rest, and already after the first training session Capello sent me to him:
“Italo, give the kid a hard time!”
The rest of the team had hit the showers, and I was all done. I would have loved to follow the rest of the
team. But from the side a goal keeper from the junior’s came, and I started to get it. Italo was going to
feed me balls, bam, bam. They came against me from all different angles. There were crosses, passes,
he threw the ball, he made one two’s, and I shot against the goal, and was never supposed to leave the
box, the penalty area. It was my area, he said. That was the place I was supposed to be and make shots,
shoot, and there wasn’t any talks of resting or taking it easy. It was a high tempo.
“Get them, harder, more determined, don’t hesitate”, Italo shouted, and that became a routine, a habit.
Sometimes Del Piero and Trezeguet came down also, but usually it was only me. It was me and Italo, and
it was fifty, sixty, a hundred shots towards the goal. Sometimes Capello showed up, and he’s like he is.
“I’m going to beat Ajax out of your body”, he said.
“Alrigh, sure.”
“I don’t need that Dutch style. One, two, one, two, one two’s, make a trick and play technically. Dribble
through the whole team. I can make it without all that. I need goals. You get that! I have to get the Italian
way in you. You have to get more killer instinct.”
But under Capello I changed.
His toughness infected me and I became less of an artist and more of a slugger who wanted to win at all
costs. "
"I got up to ninety eight kilo at most, but that felt as too much. I became clumsy, and had to do a little less
workout and more running. But on the whole I changed to a tougher, faster and better player, and I
learned to be completely respecting less towards the big stars. It doesn’t pay off to step aside. Capello
made me understand that. You have to take your place. The stars shouldn’t hamper you, it’s the opposite.
They should trigger you, and I started to grow. I got respect, or rather, I took it. Step by step I became
who I am today, the one that steps out from a lost game angry as a mad man and no one dares to come
close, and absolutely, it can seem negative. I scare a lot of young players. I scream. I rage.
But I bring that attitude with me since Juventus, and just like Capello I decided to not care about whom
people were. Their name could be Zambrotta or Nedved, if they didn’t give it all in practice, they would
hear about it. Capello didn’t just beat Ajax out of me. He made me the guy that comes to a club and
demands that the league title should be won, no matter that, and that has helped me a lot, no doubt about
it. It changed me as a football player."
But it didn’t make me calmer. We had a defender in the team, a French guy named Jonathan Zebina. He
had played in Roma with Capello and won the scudetto with the club in 2001. He was with us now. I don’t
think he felt so good. He had personal problems and on training he played aggressively. One day in
training he brutally tackled me. I stepped up to him and stood real close:
“If you want to play dirty, tell me, so that I can play dirty back!”
Then he head butted me, just bam, and after that it went fast. I didn’t have the time to talk. It was a pure
reflex. I hit him and it happened right away. He wasn’t even done with the head butting. But I must have
punched hard. He went down in the grass, and I had no idea what I was expecting. A crazy Capello who
maybe ran and yelled. But Capello just stood there a bit away from us just ice cold like it didn’t even have
anything to do with him. Everyone else was talking: What happened? What is this? There was buzzing
everywhere, and I remember Cannavaro, Cannavaro and I always helped each other.
“Ibra”, he said. “What have you done?” For a moment I thought he was upset.
But then he blinked, like, Zebina deserved that. Cannavaro didn’t like the guy either, not like he had
behaved lately, but Lillian Thuran, the French guy, did it in another style.
“Ibra”, he said. “You’re young and stupid. You can’t do that. You’re just dumb.” But he didn’t have the time
to say more. A roar echoed over the whole pitch and there was only one person who could scream like
that.
“Thuuuuuraaam”, Capello screamed. “Shut up and get away from there”, and obviously, Thuram got
away, he became like a little child, and I got also out of there, I needed to cool down.
Two hours later I saw a guy in the massage room who had an ice bag pushed to his face. It was Zebina. I
must have punched him really hard. He was still in pain. He was going to have a black eye for a long
time, and Moggi fined the both of us. But Capello never did anything. He didn’t even call for a meeting. He
just said one thing:
“It was good for the team!”
That was all. He was like that. He was hard. He wanted adrenalin. You were allowed to fight, and the
pumped like a bull. But there was one thing you definitely weren’t allowed to do: challenge his authority or
behaving with arrogance (ed note: problem with translating again. But we’re not talking about the type of
arrogance Ibra is 'famous’ for. But the type of arrogance where you think you can win without giving your
best). Then he flipped out. I remember when we were playing a quarter final against Liverpool in the
Champions League. We lost by two-zero, and before the game Capello had made the tactics and decided
who was going to cover who when Liverpool had a corner. But Lillian Thuram decided to change player.
He covered another Liverpool player and on that occasion they scored. In the dressing room afterwards
Capello made his ordinary walk up and down while we were all sitting there on the bench in a ring around
him and wondered what was going to happen.
“Who told you to change player?” he said to Thuram.
“No one, but I figured it would be better that way”, Thuram answered.
Capello took a couple of breaths.
“Who told you to change player?” he repeated.
“I thought it would be better that way.” It was the same explanation again, and Capello asked the question for a third time and got the same
answer again. Then the outbreak came, the one that had been waiting in him like a bomb.
“Have I told you too change player or what? Is it me or someone else who’s in charge? It’s me, you hear
that! I’m the one who tells you what to do. Do you understand that?”
Lol he is saying nothing but praise about capello in his book, shut the fuck up if dont even read the book
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pathetic "analytics" without proper arguments
