English Soccer Club Defends Hiring Italian Coach Known for Fascist Salutes

Alessia Pierdomenico/Reuters After he led the Roman soccer club Lazio to victory over their local rivals A.C. Roma in 2005, Paolo Di Canio greeted fans with a fascist salute.

Just two weeks after a Greek soccer player who celebrated a goal with a fascist salute was banned from representing his country for life, an Italian coach who made the same gesture repeatedly during his playing days has been hired by a club in England’s top division.

The appointment of Paolo Di Canio to manage Sunderland, a club struggling to avoid relegation from the English Premier League, was immediately condemned by at least one board member, the former British foreign minister David Miliband, who resigned in protest over “the new manager’s past political statements.”

The most famous of those statements came in 2005, when Di Canio told an Italian news agency, “I’m a fascist, not a racist,” when he was banned for one game for making what he called “the Roman salute” to Irriducibili, right-wing fans of the club he supported as a boy, Lazio. “I made the Roman salute because it’s a salute from a comrade to his comrades and was meant for my people,” he added. “With this stiff arm I do no want to incite violence or racial hatred.”

Di Canio, who has the Latin word for “leader” tattooed on his arm in tribute to Mussolini, made the fascist salute at least three times in 2005 before being banned. On one occasion he even raised his arm, in in full view of television cameras, at a match in Livorno, where the home team’s fans were known for their left-wing sympathies and the club’s star player, Cristiano Lucarelli, celebrated goals by revealing a Che Guevara T-shirt worn under his jersey.

Paolo Cocco/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Following victory in the Rome derby in January 2005, the Lazio player Paolo Di Canio gave fans what he called a “Roman salute.”

Several years earlier, Di Canio admitted in his autobiography that he was “fascinated by Mussolini.” In a passage that mixed praise and condemnation for Il Duce, Di Canio told Gabriele Marcotti, the journalist who co-authored his memoir:

I think he was a deeply misunderstood individual. He deceived people. His actions were often vile. But all this was motivated by a higher purpose. He was basically a very principled individual. Yet he turned against his sense of right and wrong. He compromised his ethics.

Despite these apparently frank admissions of his political sympathies in the past, Di Canio’s new employers reacted with indignation when the issue was raised on Monday. “It is disappointing that some people are trying to turn the appointment of a head coach into a political circus,” Sunderland’s chief executive, Margaret Byrne, said in a statement. She went on to blame the media for misrepresenting the coach’s views. “To accuse him now, as some have done, of being a racist or having fascist sympathies,” Ms. Byrne said, “is insulting not only to him but to the integrity of this football club.”

For his part, Di Canio said in a video interview for the club’s Web site that it was “stupid and ridiculous” to accuse him of racism, naming three black players he was friends with during his career. One of those players, however, the Trinidadian-British goalkeeper Shaka Hislop, told the BBC in 2005 that he no longer considered himself friends with Di Canio after the salutes, “because of what those gestures mean and the wider effect of it.” He added, “Paolo was certainly someone I considered a friend who I liked a lot, so I am very disappointed.”

Writing on Twitter on Monday, Di Canio’s co-author argued that even though he does not share the new Sunderland coach’s politics â€" he called the salute “wrong and insensitive” â€" it was incorrect to call him a Nazi or a racist.

@rich_swin @darrenrichman fascistic Yes. Anti-Semitic Pro Mussolini A nazi A racist No.

â€" Gabriele Marcotti (@Marcotti) 1 Apr 13

@Marcotti I’m at a loss to respond to this. This says it all . No ambiguity here Gabby. Pro-nazi #fact http://t.co/dZaGNzvR1P

â€" Stevie (@stevebhoy) 1 Apr 13

@stevebhoy no, not fact. That’s a roman fascist salute to Lazio fans who made same back. It’s their salute. Not making nazi statement

â€" Gabriele Marcotti (@Marcotti) 1 Apr 13

@DannyColclough I’m not defending the salute. It was wrong and insensitive and loaded. But it doesn’t make him a Nazi.

â€" Gabriele Marcotti (@Marcotti) 1 Apr 13

He also thanked another journalist for drawing attention to another passage from the memoir, in which Di Canio expressed some sympathy for the difficulties encountered by immigrants to Italy.

Thanks to @aasmahmir for this. http://t.co/Uxr4h89AFC As she says, primary source, make up your own mind.

â€" Gabriele Marcotti (@Marcotti) 1 Apr 13

In the interview with Sunderland’s Web site on Monday, Di Canio also claimed that the media was unfairly representing his views by quoting just one portion of the long interview that was used for his biography. “I expressed an opinion in an interview many years ago. Some pieces were taken for media convenience. They took my expression in a very, very negative way - but it was a long conversation and a long interview. It was not fair.”

He added: “What offends me more than everything is not because they touch me; they touch what my parents taught to me; the values they gave to me. This is not acceptable. So, what I can say If someone is hurt, I’m sorry, but that didn’t come from me, it came from a big story that people put out in a different way to what it was.”

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.