Paolo Di Canio reveals ‘beautiful’ West Ham United purchase he spends on ‘every single season’ to this day
Paolo Di Canio says he buys a new West Ham kit “every single season” for his five-a-side team to play in because the claret and blue combination is “perfect”.
The Italian told Simon Jordan on his Up Front podcast on 28 September that the club colours are “beautiful” to him and he can’t resist buying each new version that comes out for his Thursday night games.
The 55-year-old noted his enduring connection to the club despite growing up at Lazio and having the Rome-based side in his “blood”.
Di Canio said (51m 40s): “Upton Park was something special, the stories that the people used to tell me, the Bobby Moore Stand, the claret and blue colour, perfect combination, beautiful.”
Jordan cut in: “You and your bloody colours again, no wonder you run a clothes shop, you appreciate these things.”
Di Canio replied: “Yeah, every year I buy the West Ham kit, every single season for my friend. We’ve got a team, we play Thursday nights five-a-side. Every year new kit, we’ve got the kit because it’s beautiful.”
Bond
For someone who only spent four and a half seasons at the club there will be few others, in the modern era at least, who left such a lasting impression on West Ham in such a short space of time.
Turning down Manchester United, twice as he claims, obviously helps, as does a record of 47 Premier League goals in just 118 games.
With the current side experiencing more success under David Moyes than they usually did between now and Di Canio’s time at the club at the turn of the century there will be some more candidates to fill the same kind of place in the club’s history.
Declan Rice may have sacrificed that status with a move to London rivals Arsenal but, for now at least, the scorer of the winning goal in the Europa Conference League final, Jarrod Bowen, may be coming close.
And after a difficult campaign last season ended in the glory of a first major trophy in decades there is an opportunity to kick on which looked to have been lost amid the threat of relegation last term.
In other West Ham news, the club are at the forefront of a race to bring in the next big thing from Brazil with a move to the Premier League looking increasingly likely.