Indeed his arrival meant exactly a third of the Owls squad was made up of overseas fare. Benito Carbone had the ability to captivate and infuriate and often in the same passage of play and until we knew any better – in both senses – that was enough to have him considered one of the best the continent had to offer. Handsome. “I had to mix with other players, learn English culture and live as an English guy, but I did not understand that at the time.”. “As far as I’m concerned you can say bollocks to that Fancy Dan s**t,” was manager Danny Wilson’s brutal assessment after one particularly ineffective performance. Even so, an indisputable timeline tells us that when Sheffield Wednesday signed the forward for £3m in October 1996 there were already 239 non-English stars parading their talents in the top flight. A player defined by a quixotic, exotic aura of other-ness. FORGOTTEN GOAL: Benito Carbone for Wednesday vs Forest from this weekend in 1998. He was a novelty in that regard. Once again this directly corresponds with entrenched prejudices held by us Brits because this remember was the nineties; a recent but unenlightened era that believed any sportsman native to the peninsula must by default be ‘hot-headed’. None would have dared. Benito "Benny" Carbone (born 14 August 1971) is a former Italian professional footballer and current manager of Ternana. On the positive end of the scale he was as beautiful as us craggy. It’s that he was foreign. That actually happened. How highly he is rated beyond that though really does come down to how much our memories play tricks on us. This reluctance to muck in and forge bonds with team-mates caused serious problems at Wednesday and caused problems at Aston Villa too when he transferred his silky skills to the Midlands in 1999. Benito Carbone statistics – 48 years_old Forward. pic.twitter.com/w4Ne1QbCMQ, — Proper Football (@sid_lambert) December 8, 2019. If not he would barely be a footnote and certainly not warrant a thousand-plus words of retrospection here. Remember when Sheffield Wednesday made Benito Carbone and Paolo Di Canio pose in front of the least appetising Italian cuisine ever? When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. Ron Atkinson meanwhile, his second manager at the Owls, would reward him with boiled sweets for excelling in training, an insight that says a good deal. This oft-used analogy was usually squared at those who could be sensational when it suited but had a propensity to disappear in tough times and this sadly applies to Carbone for all his honest endeavour.