When Paolo Di Canio turned down Man Utd and stayed loyal to West Ham

It's been 20 years since Paolo Di Canio slotted past a statuesque Fabian Barthez to help West Ham dump Manchester United out of the FA Cup in the fourth round.

A stunned capacity Old Trafford looked on in horror as the Italian snuck in behind United's backline to collect Frederic Kanoute's perfectly weighted through ball, before calmly stroking the ball past Barthez with the outside of his foot.

His finish was as cool as it comes, his celebration was iconic, and his legend at West Ham already secured. But things could have been very different for Di Canio just a year later, had the fiery forward opted to take Sir Alex Ferguson up on the offer of joining Manchester United.

The Red Devils were in need of striking reinforcements after selling Andy Cole to Blackburn and putting fellow treble winner Dwight Yorke up for sale.

But instead of jumping ship, Di Canio remained loyal to Hammers manager Harry Redknapp, who had taken a punt on him a couple of years earlier when nobody would - owing to Di Canio's infamous altercation with referee Paul Alcock, whom he had shoved to the ground after being sent off playing for Sheffield Wednesday. That incident incurred a hefty 11-match ban for the Italian.

The decision, then, to turn down Sir Alex Ferguson's call cost Di Canio the chance to play for by far the best team in the country. Nevertheless, he felt he could not abandon West Ham after they afforded him the opportunity to continue his career at the highest level, becoming in his words, "family".

“I thought it was a joke. I thought it was my friend from Italy,” Di Canio recalled to Sky Sports in April 2020. "My stomach went a bit because it makes you think you have underestimated yourself, that you are bigger than what you thought.

“Man Utd call you, try to persuade you to move because they want you. For a couple of minutes you feel big and strong. It was strange for me to say no to Sir Alex. I said ‘thanks, 1000 times thanks, but I can’t. West Ham are the family that warmed to me in the worst moment in my life, I’m the skipper, I can’t.’

“He told me, ‘Paolo, respect for this, I love people that think in this way. You are the man that I thought you were.”

Sir Alex Ferguson had to settle in the end for Diego Forlan, but the Uruguayan failed to become the perfect partner that the Scot so desperately wanted to find for lead talisman Ruud van Nistelrooy. Missing out on Di Canio was something he was still ruing years later, when he told magazine GQ how big of an impact he thought the Italian could have made.

"Di Canio would have been capable of becoming a truly great player at Manchester United," Ferguson remarked (quotes carried by the Telegraph). “I mean, he was a great player. But when you have a player like Di Canio, who expresses himself as an individual, like [George] Best and Cantona did, and [Ryan] Giggs, [Wayne] Rooney, Ronaldo and [Dimitar] Berbatov do... we make heroes quickly here. Di Canio could have been in that category.”

He eventually finished his career in England at Charlton Athletic, after West Ham were unable to renew his contract following their relegation in 2003. And though he never graced the Old Trafford turf as a player, Manchester United will never forget the day Paolo Di Canio came to FA Cup town.

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