A Ringhio Gattuso is perhaps just what the national team needs

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Ringhio Gattuso is ugly, mean, sometimes even ungrammatical. One who always calls a spade a spade and wine a wine, as he likes to say. He doesn't worry about the consequences that his speech could have. He just does it. Since he left the field for the bench, he has made mistakes almost everywhere around the world, collecting more sackings than confirmations and only one Italian Cup with Napoli. He has a curriculum that the president of a four-time world champion federation should crumple up and throw in the wastepaper basket. Yet Ringhio Gattuso could really be the right man for this National team that doesn't need alchemy, but passion, doesn't need schemes and tactical inventions, but only a lot, a lot of heart . And that has never been lacking in Gennaro Gattuso, 47 years old, born a seventh year old, from Corigliano Calabro, a boy who ran away from Perugia to go and play in Glasgow, on the Rangers side where he found a real job, a wife who still puts up with him and international respect, in addition to the teasing of Gascoigne who pooped in his socks. He went abroad for the money, but also to learn, to escape the ritual of the path of young people on the launch pad.

Nowadays it is fashionable to go and study abroad, at the time it was an un-Italian way of life. He wanted to be tough and even according to Scottish commentators he became the toughest. In Calabria they call him Pitbull, in Scotland they called him Braveheart which sounds more elegant than Ringhio, but it certainly gives the idea, like the nickname that has always accompanied him during his Italian career which became something great when he ended up in a locker room full of champions like that of Milan. But just as Rivera needed Lodetti, just as Platini couldn't do without Furino, that Milan of the invincibles wouldn't have existed without Gattuso. He ran for two, hit for four and if someone turned the other way he would put them back in line with a look, a growl. If necessary Ringhio will slam you against the locker in the locker room. If it were up to him he would even lock you in if necessary. In the era of political correctness Gattuso is the most incorrect thing that could exist in the world of football. To get a national team with little talent and an obvious crisis of confidence and faith in the Azzurri in line, a Ringhio can be useful . Imagine how Gattuso might react to a phone call from a player telling him he wants to give up. Or how he might enter the locker room before a World Cup play-off. “With the team I am their best friend and worst enemy, but I don’t hold grudges against those who make mistakes, everything goes away the next day,” he says. When an injury threatened to miss the 2006 World Cup, he almost threatened Lippi: “If you don’t take me to the World Cup I’ll tie myself to the bus.” That’s how he healed the little aches and pains.

In his wanderings around the world, Ringhio has sat on important benches (Milan, Naples, Marseille, Split) trying to give meaning to the game of his teams. "Grit and heart are the ABC of football. Without desire, without soul you can't play", he always said. But he has learned that heart and soul must be accompanied by ideas. He has learned many: "I knew that being a coach would not be easy, that being a great footballer would not be enough. I traveled to learn, I made difficult choices, but it was a path that I wanted to take. There is always something to learn, every day there are many new things, there are good colleagues but it also takes a lot of humility to appreciate even new things". He will never be a professor, but today's national team doesn't need that. A growl is needed to make everyone understand what it means to wear that shirt with the four world stars on the heart. If an anti-crisis unit with other Italian heroes is set up around the risk, it could really be the right way to avoid losing the third World Cup in a row.

“If someone is born square, he doesn’t die round,” is the title of his autobiography. But if you are round, you will see that Gennaro Gattuso, known as Ringhio, will make you become square with his slaps. Let him work his way. He is not as handsome as Mancini, but he is not as obsessed as Spalletti. And he is not even the last card left in the deck. It is not an orthodox choice, but perhaps it is exactly what was needed.

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