I suppose I could be accused of revisionism, as I was happy with him when he was here, proud of the club and proud of our achievements. But it's the stuff that's come out after he's left, the stuff that smacks of selfishness, his lack of loyalty despite preaching it repeatedly as the most important thing at the club, and his general 'I don't give a shit about your football club anymore now they're not paying my wages, despite repeatedly stating that it was not about the money, it was about integrity and principle and loyalty' nature that has pissed me off and made me change my mind.
His 1.5 seasons in charge will go down in my memory as some of the best football I've seen at the County Ground, and some of the most fun I've had following the team (I'm young, so I'm not arguing they're the best- just the best I've seen). But those memories will be tainted by everything that happened after Ritchie was sold. I was a staunch Di Canio supporter (I didn't worship his very existence mind, I knew he was a flawed genius), but I do look back on all that with some bitterness.
In terms of his commitment
to the job he is pretty much faultless. There aren't many managers who would carry on working in the immediate aftermath of both parents deaths, who'd shovel snow off the pitch with the fans to get a game on into the early hours of the morning, who would put in the hours he does in training and in preparatory work/ analysis of the opposition before a game.
It's his commitment
to the club and its supporters, or moreover his proclamations of commitment to the club and its supporters, which form such a central part of his cult of personality, that ring hollow in hindsight, and will, in time, ring equally hollow for Sunderland fans I'm sure, though I don't doubt they'll get swept up in it in the same way we did while he was here (and why not? footballs an entertainment/ community sport at heart, and in terms of entertainment, and forging a sense of community, you won't get many better managers for that while he lasts).
I think what's different with Di Canio from others who preach loyalty without practising it (which is, lets face it, a pretty ubiquitous characteristic in the game) is that the sense of relationship and unity he forges between fans/ players/ manager is so strong that, like any extremely close relationship that comes to a messy end, the manner of the break up, and the fallout of having to pick-up the pieces in the aftermath (which we are currently going through now), and the lingering questions of what could have been, mean the memory of his tenure, and the excitement of all that went on during it, will always be qualified by what followed, and not taken for what it was while we were in the midst of it: probably the most enjoyable period to be a Swindon fan since the early/mid 90s.
To the Sunderland fan, if you want a summary of what are, in my opinion, the contradictory character traits that make up the man from what we saw of him in his time here: he's a great tactician, an incredibly hard worker, a hopeless man manager, a financial liability in the transfer market* and a staggering egotist who will leave a trail of entertainment and destruction in his wake in equal measure when he departs.
In short:
Enjoy him while you've got him. Don't expect to love him once he's left.
*don't think having a DOF will protect you from this. If Di Canio falls out with a player (he will) that's it for them. They'll either be ostracised from the squad while continuing to drain you of wages, sold on the cheap, loaned out or have his contract paid up. And don't think he picks his battles either; he fell out with our top scorer and our captain while here and neither were seen again.
