Ex-Leeds proprietor Massimo Cellino on his love affair with the membership

For right this moment’s lunch, the person they name the ‘Manager Eater’ settles for the native speciality of tagliolini with white truffle.

Then once more, it has been simply six days since he final chewed up a boss in Brescia — his twenty first serving to in six years. ‘It’s a really costly meal,’ laughs Massimo Cellino about his insatiable and notorious urge for food for hiring and firing coaches.

There is, although, an issue after we convene at Ristorante Nineteen within the centre of this tranquil Italian metropolis, near Lake Garda. And it has nothing to do with the meals. ‘Why are you wearing that bloody colour?’ Cellino asks the lady sat by the entrance door as he walks in with Mail Sport.

The restaurant’s proprietor is sporting a purple jumper, a cardinal sin within the eyes of Cellino, who has — as anybody related to him will know — a mistrust of the color, in addition to the quantity 17. ‘They bring me bad luck,’ insists the 67-year-old maverick former Leeds proprietor, now operating Brescia in Serie B.

Cellino has bought — or refused to signal — gamers born on the seventeenth day of the month. ‘I don’t need to take the danger,’ he says. ‘It is a sickness. I am not normal. I apologise for that.’

But it was his downside with purple — related to funerals in Italy — that left him with a crimson 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 need to see it anymore”. And then they fired the bloody coach!’

Brian McDermott was the coach despatched on his method whereas the velvet sofa stayed put. It left Leeds and not using a supervisor the evening earlier than a house Championship match with Huddersfield. ‘They said, “Who is taking the team tomorrow?”,’ remembers Cellino. ‘I stated, “Why? We don’t have a manager?”. They stated, “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 sport tomorrow”… Bloody purple!’

Nigel Gibbs, McDermott’s assistant, ended up in caretaker cost and oversaw a 5-1 win. ‘I said “keep him!”’ remembers Cellino. ‘Sometimes the big mistake becomes the best thing you do. That’s bloody soccer.’ Instead, McDermott was reinstalled as boss by GFH Capital, who remained in management whereas their 75 per cent sale to Cellino awaited EFL approval. But the insanity had solely simply begun.

While McDermott survived the remainder of the season, Cellino — who initially failed his homeowners’ check however received the choice overturned that April — sacked him in the summertime. His substitute? Dave Hockaday, whose solely earlier managerial position had seen him lose his job at non-league Forest Green.

‘I didn’t know who to nominate,’ 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 always remember. We had been enjoying Middlesbrough and it was 0-0. Then Hockaday took out (Souleymane) Doukara, who was enjoying good and he put in a midfielder, which was a courageous transfer. We received 1-0.

‘After the sport, I stated, “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 realize what he informed me? “I took out Doukara because he was injured”. I stated, “So you’re s*** still!”.’

Hockaday was gone 12 days later after an ignominious six-game reign. Others lasted little longer. In reality, Hockaday was considered one of seven everlasting bosses Cellino received by in his three years at Leeds. History is now repeating itself at Brescia, whereas in 22 years accountable for first membership Cagliari, Cellino went by 36 coaches, incomes him his Mangia Allenatori (Manager Eater) moniker.

So when did he turn into 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 as a result of 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 heart to name them myself and say they’re fired as a result of I’m ashamed. I don’t prefer it. But the larger injury shouldn’t be altering the coach.’

It is typical of Cellino, then, that when requested if there’s any supervisor he regrets sacking, he insists his solely remorse is that he didn’t fireplace another. ‘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 superb particular person. That was a giant downside with Leeds that yr.’

That was the yr that Cellino ceded half of his Elland Road empire to Andrea Radrizzani. At the top of the 2016-17 marketing campaign, Radrizzani purchased out his fellow Italian to take full possession.

‘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 completed seventh that season, one place exterior the play-offs. Cellino is scathing of Radrizzani’s decision-making of their six months of co-ownership and even suspects he didn’t need the Whites to go up so he might purchase them outright on a budget.

‘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 thoughts he stated, “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 soccer. He bought everybody, as a result of Andrea preferred to promote and purchase gamers. Football shouldn’t be that. That’s why I name them amateurs. They are harmful.’

Cellino additionally blames Radrizzani for the membership’s relegation from the Premier League final season. The media mogul has since bought his stake in Leeds to 49ers Enterprises, and now co-owns Sampdoria, who go to Brescia in Serie B on Sunday. Cellino, you believe you studied, won’t be rolling out the crimson carpet.

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

But what about his personal Leeds legacy? Cellino is, unsurprisingly, extra constructive about it than Whites followers, who would describe his tenure as one of many worst and weirdest within the membership’s historical past.

‘I still don’t know if it occurred 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 evening as a result of it used to lose £100,000 a day. It misplaced £32million in a yr. There had been too many prices. But the primary yr, I closed with £8m loss. Second season, I broke even. Third season, I introduced the membership constructive.

‘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 a lot. But I had fun. I had a phenomenal expertise. I’m simply sorry that I didn’t deliver Leeds into the Premier League. Never thoughts. It was my fault. No one else’s.’

Cellino was so unpopular at Leeds that followers as soon as even protested his regime with a pretend funeral to mourn the ‘death of the club we fell in love with’, full 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 membership anthem Marching On Together.

‘I’ll always remember,’ provides 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 workplace within the coronary heart of the town, Cellino stops to level out the constructing a number of yards down the highway. ‘There is the court,’ he says. ‘I chose the wrong place!’

Others would argue his shut proximity to the Palazzo di Giustizia (Palace of Justice) is relatively useful, given how typically he’s referred to as there. Most not too long ago, he had greater than £50million value of property seized amid an investigation into alleged tax crimes.

However, the agriculture magnate – nicknamed the King of Corn – brings information. He has simply been cleared of the newest allegations in opposition to him. ‘Yesterday, not guilty in the high court,’ reveals Cellino, who has beforehand 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 with out stealing. In Italy, if in case you have success, you’re a dishonest particular person. That’s the mentality.

‘I shouldn’t have come again right here. But I couldn’t keep in England with out Leeds. I needed to run away. It’s like whenever you get divorced. You want to begin seeing different girls in any other case you’ll always remember the one earlier than!’

Back in Cellino’s workplace, a figurine of the Virgin Mary has pleasure of place. He is deeply spiritual and as soon as received an area priest to ‘bless’ the Elland Road centre circle and dressing room with holy water, in a bid to finish an eight-month run and not using a residence 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 suppose it hurts anybody to deliver 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 subsequent residence match in opposition to Cardiff.

We transfer alongside the hall to the Brescia boardroom, the place two shirts dangle proudly on the wall – these of Robert Baggio, who ended his profession on the membership, and Sandro Tonali, who began out right 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 can’t fathom how the younger participant he helped nurture has come to be banned from soccer for 10 months for unlawful 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 performed nothing fallacious when he was in England. Why does he should pay from English soccer for one thing he made earlier than when he was a child, three years youthful?’

Talk of former Brescia gamers brings us on to Mario Balotelli, who joined his hometown crew for a season after they received promotion to Serie A in 2019. Mere point out of the ex-Manchester City striker, although, makes Cellino visibly irate.

‘I like to not talk about him,’ he says. ‘It’s lunchtime, my abdomen may be very weak. He’s not value even to spend one minute speaking about him. For me, he doesn’t exist. It’s been a nasty dream and I need to get up. It’s a nightmare.’

Cellino is known to have terminated Balotelli’s contract after he didn’t return to coaching when Serie A resumed after the Covid shutdown in 2020. Earlier that season, Cellino was accused of constructing a racist comment about Balotelli when, requested why he had been dropped, he stated: ‘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 additionally denies one other story that, when his then boss Pep Clotet was despatched to the stands throughout a match in opposition to Cremonese in February 2021, he took his place within the dugout. ‘I am crazy but not that crazy!’ insists Cellino. In reality, he thinks his craziest instances is likely to be behind him as he begins to contemplate life exterior of the soccer madhouse.

‘Now I am getting old, I don’t really feel my vitality is as robust because it was once,’ 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 need to change.

‘That’s why I like England. They shield their historical past. I hope England is rarely going to vary like that. England invented soccer and England has to avoid wasting soccer. I’ll retire to England to get pleasure from English soccer.’

Cellino’s spouse and daughter nonetheless stay in London and he gained British citizenship final yr. Would he ever purchase one other membership in England? ‘I wish I could but I’m not wealthy sufficient,’ he provides. ‘I don’t need to come to make any extra errors.’

Whisper it quietly, however the Manager Eater is likely to be having his final supper.