SOCCER ANGLES:Despite a history that suggested management would not suit the Italian, his story so far at Swindon Town would indicate otherwise, writes MICHAEL WALKER

YOU MAY like him or you may not. You may find him self-absorbed, politically wild and occasionally adolescent. Or you may consider him to be different, stimulating and intriguing. Paolo Di Canio is a man who divides and sub-divides opinion but what can be said is that he is Paolo Di Canio and no other.

Take for example the index to his autobiography. Alphabetically, in the (a) section under his name come the following: argument with Atkinson; argument with Burns; argument with Capello; argument with Ferguson; argument with Trapattoni; argument with Wilson.

Presumably these are the stand-out arguments that decorated the gifted Italian’s up-down playing career. There will have been others deemed unfit for inclusion, or unworthy. What is immediately established by their presence is that Di Canio is prone to the odd row.

The argument with Ferguson is not Alex Ferguson, but Ian Ferguson of Rangers, whom Di Canio encountered in his Celtic days. But the other five arguments are with managers and might suggest at a superficial level that Di Canio would not be suited to football management as a career.

And yet, as of May last year, Paolo Di Canio is a manager. The club he took over in his first attempt in this fragile profession is Swindon Town, freshly-relegated to League Two. Di Canio became Swindon’s 12th manager this century. There are enough facts in this paragraph alone to make Di Canio’s decision look peculiar.

But Swindon sit fourth in League Two having won three of their last four games and while there have been some lows, Di Canio and his club might just be getting their act together. Management takes all sorts.

There is sufficient optimism locally for Swindon’s County Ground – capacity 14,700 – to be sold out today. It is FA Cup third-round afternoon and casting around for an upset, the eye falls on the visit of Premier League Wigan Athletic to Di Canio’s new Wiltshire home.

Despite Wigan’s league anxiety, the squad available to Roberto Martinez should have plenty in hand against a Swindon side which, despite going well, lost at Torquay on St Stephen’s Day. Then again, Wigan lost 4-1 at home to Sunderland on Tuesday night on a heavy pitch and Martinez may also have Wigan’s next Premier League game in mind – it’s against Manchester City.

But Swindon beat Huddersfield 4-1 at the County Ground in the FA Cup’s first round and so Di Canio has laced his pre-Wigan realism with optimism.

“I am sure that, without sounding too arrogant, we can damage them,” he said. “Obviously we have to be realistic and it could happen that we could lose 5-0. We must remember that they are three leagues above us after all.

“But if we can go through the first 20 minutes in the way I hope we can then during the game we will build a special performance.”

This is Paolo Di Canio, manager, speaking. It is routine pre-game chatter. He can do that.

But it was different when Paolo Di Canio, the man, was interviewed last month in the Independent on Sunday magazine.

Then one of several statements that reminded you of the different sort of football character Di Canio is came forth: “I pay my taxes. My life speaks for me. I am an ordinary man.” Of course, he is not. Joining Swindon had not just been a leap for someone who played for AC Milan, Juventus, Celtic and West Ham among others. It was a leap for the club, who instantly lost a sponsor. The GMB Union withdrew due to Di Canio’s longstanding admiration for Benito Mussolini and Italy’s fascist era.

There are those fascist-salute pictures when he rejoined Lazio that enhance Di Canio’s far-right image, and in a disturbing way they could have inspired some Lazio supporters. Yet there is a cartoon element to Di Canio that always undermined the claim he was/is a sinister Mussolini-like menace to society. True, Di Canio was sent off in his fourth game as Swindon manager; it was for being a constant yap in the dugout. That was August. By last month he was talking about a new sense of calm. Not long after his 43rd birthday, Di Canio’s father Ignazio died. He said this has come at time when he has been thinking more spiritually, specifically about the Japanese Samurai culture.

“I have read a lot,” Di Canio explained. “Mishima, obviously. And the spiritual teachings in the traditions of Hagakure, and Bushido.

“I like the code they lived by. The loyalty. The honour. There’s a story about a Samurai who committed hara-kiri because he arrived late for an appointment.”

He said, too, that he has been to Stonehenge and that he would see in the winter solstice with a bonfire in his garden: “pointed in the proper direction, in the pagan tradition, with laurel branches”.

“It’s important to me, because a few years ago I started to feel the energy . . . something that connects with others, in some way. I respect anybody who believes in Christ, Buddha, Allah or Krishna.

“I believe in nature. I believe in earth, sun, fire and water. I believe in the circle of life. When a tree loses its leaves, you think it’s dead. But the tree is only resting. It’s born again in the spring. I believe in energy. Positive energy.”

This is about as far removed from 4-4-2 tactical talk as you can get. Which brings us back to (a) for argument and Giovanni Trapattoni.

When Di Canio joined Juventus in the summer of Italia ’90, Juve’s manager was Gigi Maifredi, Italy’s answer to Kevin Keegan. Under Maifredi, Juve bombed forward with a five-man attack. They reached the top of Serie A but finished seventh. Maifredi departed; Trap returned.

The current manager of the Republic of Ireland, as you may have noticed, is not Keeganesque. Forwards, creative players, would be sacrificed as Juve went back to basics. One was Di Canio, who became a Trapattoni substitute sent on “with a laundry list of tactical duties . . . Essentially, he wanted me to be a full-back in midfield. I was assigned a small rectangle to the right of midfield. God forbid I should ever step outside it.”

If he did, Di Canio said that he would be alerted by Trap’s shrill whistle. “It made you feel rather like a dog.”

It was destined to end in push-and-shove.

And it did, literally, with Di Canio pushing the manager over one day.

“You’re finished,” was Trapattoni’s response.

It must have been said a few times to Paolo Di Canio down the years. But he wasn’t then and he isn’t now. He is the manager of Swindon Town.