The bet on food with Ronaldo, the rows with anyone who defended him: this is how Antonio Cassano knowingly threw away a world-class career

"cassanata"

Feminine noun (joking, ironic): a gesture, behaviour or stunt typical of the footballer Antonio Cassano. 

If Antonio Cassano, unlikely as it may be, were ever to slip into oblivion, he could at least take comfort from the fact his name has entered the Italian language: since 2008, "cassanata" has appeared as a neologism in the Treccani dictionary.

Cassanate are something Cassano has produced in abundance. Just think of the time, frustrated at not being picked at Real Madrid, he publicly mimicked manager Fabio Capello. 

Then there was the bet with Ronaldo Fenomeno over who could eat more croissants. Cassano picked up the nickname "El Gordito" because Ronaldo, at Real, was already "El Gordo". In truth, he was the one who ate more sweets: in his first seven months in Madrid he put on 12 kilos. Too much even for Cassano. He never did worse at any of his many clubs: after 18 months and only four goals, his adventure with Los Blancos was over. 

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Real Madrid’s strangest "Galáctico"

His move to Los Blancos remains the strangest of the Galacticos era, even more so than Thomas Gravesen’s. The Dane lacked the technique, Cassano lacked the temperament. Even now, people still wonder what Florentino Pérez was thinking with that final signing of his first spell in charge.

At 23, he was seen as one of the greatest talents of his generation, with 52 goals and 9 assists in 161 appearances for Roma. In his four and a half years in the capital, though, he had fallen out with almost all the club's directors.

Francesco Totti was captain and saw Cassano as a footballing brother. He had taken him into his home and, in the end, stopped speaking to him: Cassano suspected that Totti and his parents had stolen a cheque from him and made an enormous scene. Not even Totti’s objection calmed him down, namely that he earned far more than Cassano and had absolutely no reason to steal his money.

Cassano later found the cheque in his car, after it had fallen from his trouser pocket, but by then it was too late to put things right

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"I respected no rules and I enjoyed myself": Antonio Cassano at Real Madrid

During the 2004/2005 season, after Fabio Capello’s departure, Roma went through four managers: Cassano was responsible for at least one of those exits. Rudi Völler resigned in September 2006 after only 26 days in charge, exasperated by the striker’s antics. Cassano had come to blows on the pitch in the opening league match against Fiorentina and had been sent off. When Völler tried to speak to him, he walked away. Then Cassano publicly criticised both the record €100,000 fine and the manager.

Völler left Roma, but nothing improved under the other managers either. In his final six months at Roma, Luciano Spalletti left him out of the squad 11 times for disciplinary reasons. Even so, Rosella Sensi, then president, offered him a new contract heavily linked to his performances on the pitch. Cassano responded by publicly showering her with abuse too. 

His career looked finished before it had really started: no big Serie A club showed any interest in a player who alternated flashes of genius with irrational behaviour. 

Then Real and Pérez arrived, paying €5.5 million for the transfer and almost doubling his salary. And Cassano? "I did everything to ruin everything. I respected no rules and I enjoyed doing it."

Beyond the binges and the orgies, he said he had had 600 women before marriage, largely during those 18 months in Madrid with 12 kilos of excess weight, he is remembered at Real only for the fur coat he wore at the Bernabéu in January 2006. 

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Why Antonio Cassano is a rebel

Unlike other troubled talents, Cassano is also self-critical and reflective. He throws himself into his "cassanate" fully aware of what he is doing, knows when he has gone too far and, with time, apologises to those he has hurt. It has always helped that he does not take himself too seriously and knows how to laugh at himself. With him, it is easy to lose patience, but almost impossible not to find him entertaining and likeable. 

For five years he and Totti did not speak, but now they are friends again. Even Capello, the manager who launched him at Roma and then at Real, has forgiven him a great deal, while remaining disappointed, and now speaks about him with respect. 

He wasted immense talent. He blew up everything he had built, but with almost admirable consistency. Yet in the end he still had a great career.

His lack of discipline, his difficult relationship with authority and his inability to trust friends are easy to trace back to a complicated childhood. Antonio Cassano grew up in Bari Vecchia, in the 1980s and early 1990s, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in southern Italy. In recent years Bari Vecchia has had a makeover: the streets of the old town are clean and the narrow houses and cellars have been renovated.

Where tourists now stroll through the alleyways and watch grandmothers make orecchiette, people once lived in an off-limits area, with city guides warning about pickpockets. Here Antonio played football in the street and it is said he did not set foot on a proper pitch until he was 13. Believe it or not, he has always remained a street kid. His father took no interest in him, his older half-brother broke into vending machines, cars and houses, and even today spends more time in prison than out of it. Antonio claims to have repeated the first year of school six times before dropping out.  

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Messi before Messi

Cassano is convinced that, without that goal, he would have become a criminal. In an instant, the nobody from Bari Vecchia became Fantantonio, El Pibe de Bari, inspired by El Pibe de Oro Diego Armando Maradona. After that goal against Inter, everyone called him that. 

He describes it like this in his autobiography, written with journalist Pierluigi Pardo: "Perrotta plays me a perfect 50-metre pass, I control it with my heel, go past Blanc, who is sprinting back, play the ball between him and Panucci, who is cutting across, and send them both crashing into the barrier. I shoot into the corner and then I see the stand coming closer and closer. The celebration. I had been born". 

Anyone at the stadium, or at home in front of the television, remembers that in Bari’s 2-1 win over Inter in the 88th minute, more than a simple, improbable and wonderful winner was unfolding. Even now, watching the footage back on YouTube, it sends shivers down the spine. 

The solo run, the goal, the ecstasy in the stand, the fans and the blond kid who did not want to go back onto the pitch.

One Serie A start was enough for Cassano to be mentioned in the same breath as Maradona, Baggio and Del Piero: Messi before Messi. "At my peak I was better than Roberto Baggio, Francesco Totti and Alessandro Del Piero!"

He recently said on his popular YouTube programme "Viva El Futbol" that he never reached that "peak either in my career or in my life".

Cassano better than Totti, Del Piero, Baggio... and Cristiano Ronaldo?

"I was better!" Not: "I could have been better". He still struggles a little with the Italian language and still prefers to speak the dialect of his native city. That makes his words more amusing, but no less megalomaniacal. For example, when he firmly states that very few players were more gifted than him and that very few had a more complete technical repertoire:

• Lionel Messi, obviously, his absolute GOAT. 
• Andrés Iniesta and Zinedine Zidane, the midfield magicians.
• Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Neymar. 

Then he adds: "Cassano. I liked myself a great deal! I could shoot, I had a unique final pass. I was physically strong. I was gifted. I gave my best even at the big clubs. And this despite never training and always being five or six kilos overweight." 

That comes from someone who, in 18 years of his career, won a Spanish league title with Real Madrid, seen from the stands, and a Serie A title as a protagonist with AC Milan. For Italy, he was noticed above all when, as after the Euro 2012 semi-final, he once again celebrated on the pitch in his underpants. 

"In football it is not only about winning trophies. What matters is the beauty of the game"

Yet many champions who played with him confirm his talent: Francesco Totti, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Zlatan Ibrahimovic have never contradicted him. 

Only José Mourinho and Cristiano Ronaldo, whom Cassano considers both overrated, have replied. It is said that an irritated CR7 sent him the list of his trophies. Mourinho, in a press conference, made a dig: "At Inter he would not even have won the "Coppa della Lombardia"". But Cassano can only laugh it off. 

"In football it is not just about winning trophies. It is about the beauty of the game", he repeats.   

At Bari, Roma, Sampdoria, AC Milan and Parma, he produced plenty of outstanding months and made his team-mates better: Sampdoria made a huge leap in quality above all because of him, only to fall back into mediocrity after he left. Despite the constant rows and frequent farewells, he was one of Italy’s most influential and beloved players for almost 20 years. Today he even appears in a dictionary, a detail that puts him ahead of CR7.