Giuseppe Sannino wakes at dawn in Bellinzona, Switzerland, ready for what he calls “yet another miracle” in the country’s second division. But the 68-year-old coach has already lived several lifetimes worth of them. “I used to clean toilets in a mental hospital,” Sannino told Gazzetta dello Sport. “Now I’ve worked my way up to Serie A.” The journey between those two points is filled with sawdust floors and cockroaches, six promotions and nine resignations, a Neapolitan childhood in flip-flops and a father who once burned his soccer shoes as punishment. Sannino doesn’t do things halfway. At Watford, he walked away from £550,000 after winning four of his first five matches because he couldn’t be anyone but himself. “I speak to your face,” he explained. “I resigned for dignity, leaving behind money.” Born in Naples and raised in Turin, young Sannino earned the nickname “cobbler” for wandering the streets in shorts and sandals. School was optional. Soccer was everything. His playing career peaked in Serie C before ending at 31, when he transitioned to coaching Vogherese’s youth team while secretly studying Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan. And working. Always working. “Wake up at 5 a.m., shift at dawn, seven hours there and then back on the field,” he recalled. For a decade he mopped psychiatric hospital floors with sawdust, battled cockroaches, and helped patients. “I experienced real suffering there. I remember a brilliant painter who sat there painting, and you wondered why she was in that place.” The Breakthrough The turning point arrived with Südtirol’s Serie D championship in 1999-2000. He quit the hospital specifically to take that job. In 2008, an agent suggested he watch a Serie C2 match where both coaches were at risk. Como won 3-2. Sannino went to Varese.Story continues below this ad “The story of my heart,” he said of three years without a home defeat and attendance swelling from 500 to 10,000. He invited players to curse each other out freely. It became the rallying cry for two promotions. In 2011, they barely missed Serie A. He left in tears. Serie A and walking away Siena brought him to the top flight. At the Olimpico against Roma, watching Francesco Totti emerge from beneath the Curva Sud, Sannino whispered to his assistant: “How many will they score today?” It finished 1-1. “One of the most beautiful matches I ever coached,” he told the newspaper. At Palermo, he fought with Maurizio Zamparini before a 1-1 draw with Cagliari. “‘Who does he think he is?’ Zamparini said,” Sannino recounted. “The next day we drew and he fired me. But he was a generous man.” The Watford resignation remains his only regret. “I have to be myself. If I’d continued, I would have clashed with everyone,” he said. The team reached the Premier League that season. The real championship Italy holds too many clichés now, Sannino says. He won’t return. “At my age, I don’t want to get into that centrifuge,” he told Gazzetta. “I’m someone who started from nothing and made it on my own.”Story continues below this ad So he went abroad: Hungary, Greece, Switzerland, Libya. In Tripoli with Al-Ittihad, his president postponed a match for Sannino’s wedding. In Benghazi, he found something more valuable than trophies. “The humble players, like Gazzi or Brienza,” he reflected. “I keep a message from a Libyan player: ‘You were a father.’” He paused. “There it is. My Scudetto (trophy)”.
From cleaning toilets at mental hospital to football coach: The unbreakable Giuseppe Sannino
