It’s been nearly 23 years since Gennaro Gattuso left Italy to move to Glasgow and sign for Rangers, but this story is still remembered in his home country.
Agent Sabatino Durante has spoken today to newspaper Il Mattino, and recalled a few stories from former Perugia president Luciano Gaucci, who recently passed away.
One of the cases was Gattuso, who’s moved to Rangers on a free transfer, but only because the Italian side didn’t know they could lose the player.
“Many years ago he would have wanted me to be the club’s general manager, but we’d have fought if I had become an employee of the club. Better adviser. And one day I advised him to hurry for Gattuso, who had meanwhile won the league title with Primavera and made his debut in the first team,” said Durante (via Il Napoli Online).
“Rino had no contract and I knew there were foreign teams buzzing around him. Gaucci trusted a federal director, who however didn’t know the rules of Fifa and didn’t know that the player could free himself. Rino went to Rangers and it was a great sorrow for me.”
After joining Rangers in 1997, Gattuso stayed at the club for only one season, having left in 1998 for Italian side Salernitana in a £4m deal.
Following his club’s relegation, he was sold to AC Milan, where he had the best years of his career, winning the Champions League twice.
He stayed as a Rossoneri for 13 years, leaving for Swiss side Sion in 2012, where he played for one season and then retired.
Now manager of Napoli, Gattuso has been linked with taking over at Rangers several times, but with him seeming fine where he is, and with Steven Gerrard very much in charge at Ibrox, that chance may have passed.
