It was the end of May 2014. The first rumors that leaked to the press offices and brought Gennaros Gattouzos to Crete as an OFI technician candidate turned out to be true.

Passionate and stubborn “Rino”, a stubborn world champion born in southern Italy, arrived in Heraklion, and in his presence a stormy semester began.

From then until today, when the 45-year-old technician is considered a top target on the Olympiacos bench next season, a lot has changed. Many, perhaps, except for one: His uncompromising and explosive nature, which does not fit into patterns, is not tamed and is constantly looking for conflict. Rino is no longer a young coach, as when he arrived in Heraklion. Back then, at 36, he was a big name in world football who hung up his boots and felt…very restless away from the pitch, now he’s a normal coach with his good and his bad, like flashes on and off the pitch.

“I think about football 24 hours a day, I have devoted my life to football. Everything is done for this. I can’t feel full of anything else,” said the son of a carpenter from Calabria in an interview with the newspaper “AC”. Words so common for such football people, but so real when it comes to the “dog of war” Rino Gattuso.
Having won the World Cup (2006) with Italy, winning the Champions League twice (2002–03, 2006–07) and twice (2003–04) in his 13-year career with Milan, a footballer who was a great player Silvio Berlusconi was a weakness during his time at the Rossoneri, he profited from the success of countless sums of money and his investments began even before he retired from active duty.

First with a pig farm, and then with luxurious restaurants.
In one of them, in Milan, an agreement was reached with the then president of OFI, Mantos Pulinakis, who was looking for a successor to the Portuguese Ricardo Sa Pinto.
While in Portugal, being “rejected” by the future coach, Pulinakis, in conversation with a well-known Italian agent, asked him if Gattuso, who had just finished his short coaching job in Sion and Palermo, Switzerland, would come. in Heraklion.

“You’re crazy; He’ll ask for over a million,” was the reply he got. “Call him and tell him I want to talk to him. Let’s make an appointment and all. – insisted Pulinakis and the next day was already in Milan. After a meeting that lasted about seven hours, she analyzed all the data for him. He told him about the debts that had strangled OFI, about the players who were barely holding back from filing appeals, about the people who were complaining, about the non-issuance of licenses that prevented the team from making transfers, and about himself, which, of course, could not support the whole project.

“I don’t care about the money. I have so much. The plan matters. I’m ambitious. I want to make a name for myself in coaching as well,” Reno told him and gave him a short time to answer him.

Pulinakis returned to Lisbon to watch the Champions League final (Real Madrid – Atletico Madrid) and shortly before the game he heard a long-awaited “yes”. The two of them went to Heraklion, and the Italian felt as if he were in Calabria as soon as he set foot in Heraklion.

“The Cretans and Crete are exceptional and it feels like I am in the village where I was born (Coriliano Calabro). I like the culture and mentality of this people. I like everything here. Crete is very similar to Calabria. It’s like I’m playing at home,” said Gattuso, who had already been renamed Gattusakis by the editors, in an interview with Italian media a month later.

“Gattuso on the island of the gods” was one of the favorite headlines of the Italian media, for a man who ran like few midfielders in world football, taking the most … scalps with his tackles, at his best “or the ball will pass either player, but never both.”

This, as it turned out, was also a honeymoon, in a team that was haunted daily by incredible situations that Gattuso’s personality could not mitigate either in terms of competition or interpersonal relationships. Quite the contrary, as his furious and unpredictable reaction and the fact that he had a demand for 100% from players who had seen the color of money for over six months turned the dressing room into a war zone.

The Italian did not want his players to do anything else than their job, and the management treated him as a “shield” from the reaction of the world.

In the game of the 4th round, where OFI took over Atromitos and although there was one win and two losses in the championship, his unimaginable outburst sounded at a press conference as a “response” to the reports that revealed the atmosphere in the dressing room and the first event of his departure from commands, reports that he fully confirmed at parting.