Manuel Pascali opens up on his Kilmarnock career
The former skipper spoke on an Italian podcast about thinking he was signing for Hamilton, 'Scottish culture' and winning the League Cup
Bona fide Killie legend Manuel Pascali gave an interview to the Italian outlet OCW Sport which was released on Friday.
The former captain talked through his time in Scotland, from thinking he was going on trial with Hamilton to lifting the League Cup in 2012.
The hour-long interview can be viewed below but, as one might expect, is in Italian.
The Killie Chronicle has translated Paska’s comments on Killie as he remembers his time in Ayrshire.
Some of his responses have been edited and condensed for clarity, and some words and idioms replaced with the closest English equivalent.
Italian footballers refer to their manager as ‘mister’ which here has been translated as ‘gaffer’, while ‘ragazzi’ is translated as ‘lads’ though words like ‘boss’ or ‘boys’ could also be translations.
Any errors are entirely the fault of the author.
He begins by recalling his move from Parma, having spent the previous season on loan at Foligno.
Joining Kilmarnock
“When the Foligno season finished, this call came.
“We’d gone into the Serie C1 play-offs with four teams, (Massimiliano) Allegri’s Sassuolo won the league.
“Then this call came that changed my life.
“In the years at Pizzighettone, when we won Serie C2, I played with (Sergio) Porrini, who older viewers will remember as one of the players who won Juventus’ last Champions League.
“He’d spent three years at Rangers post-Juve, Rino (Gattuso) spent a year there and Lorenzo (Amoruso) I think spent four or five years there too.
“Italians were well-regarded because they had gone there and done very well.
“Sergio Porrini, during training sessions in the two years we spent together, would recount to me this Scottish adventure and I listened very willingly because I understood that it was a football that was wedded to my skillset.
“He said to me, ‘oh Paska you have to go there, it’s your football: physical battles, slide tackles, passion.
“So I said, ‘f*** this is my kind of place’ but that’s as far as it went, between one chat and the other, until that summer, 2008, he called me.
Read More:
Kilmarnock reject six-figure transfer offer for Danny Armstrong
Ian Durrant at Kilmarnock: From war-torn Bosnia to Hampden heartbreak
“I said, ‘I’m on holiday’ and he said ‘Paska look, there’s this club that’s in a training camp in Italy, in Lucca, do you want to go down there? If you want you can go next Wednesday.’
“I was on holiday in Formentera with my friends, I didn’t know the club. I was a typical Italian I didn’t know all the clubs in all the leagues: Celtic, Rangers, maybe Aberdeen because (Alex) Ferguson was there before Manchester United. Maybe Hearts from Edinburgh but that’s it, I might have taken in some of the league on PC Calcio (a management sim like Football Manager).
“So what happened is I was convinced to go to this team, which at the time for some reason I thought was Hamilton. I hadn’t played at all over the summer, not even beach football with my friends so I said ‘give me 10 days to train’ and he said, ‘no, no Paska, it’s Wednesday’. I had four days, so I went back to Italy and for three days I would train morning-evening, morning-evening.
“Wednesday morning came, I took the car and I went to Lucca alone. When I talked to an agent about possibly coming with me he was on holiday too because it was the end of June!
“My car gets to Lucca – using the TomTom – and I present myself at reception convinced that the team was Hamilton. This place in Lucca was on a bit of a hill and among other things it was very hot, teams from abroad come to Italy to do their pre-season training and it’s 40 degrees.
“I park the car, grab my things. I can already see a swimming pool, it’s after lunch and I can see these men, they’re all sunburned and throwing themselves in, diving and bombing.
“I’m like, ‘f*****g hell they’re crazy’ and of course it’s them, it’s the players.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Killie Chronicle to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.