ian1964 10,761 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian1964 10,761 Posted April 6, 2015 Author Share Posted April 6, 2015 Marco Negri EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Rangers star launches astonishing attack on Lorenzo Amoruso.. 'he's a poisonous, sneaky back-stabber'. IN the final day of Record Sport’s serialisation of his autobiography, Negri has hit out at his former team mate saying: “Amoruso made me sick with a sneaky backstab too far.” THE arrival at Ibrox of Sergio Porrini and Lorenzo Amoruso should have helped transform a little corner of the stadium into our Italian heaven but it had the opposite effect. Sergio and I got on just fine, although there was that unfortunate squash incident. With Amoruso and I, though, things went downhill rapidly in a relatively short space of time and it did not take me long to work out there was far more to Lorenzo than met the eye. Amoruso is one of life’s Alpha males. He tries to lead by pushing his opinions on everyone else. He’s the type of person who would travel around the world so that it could see him. His initials are LA and I sometimes wonder if even the city that houses Hollywood would be large enough to take his big head. All the latest news from Ibrox The three of us quickly formed a friendship and Rino Gattuso was a welcome fourth member of the ‘team’. Amoruso was desperate to be leader of the pack and he would be busy telling us how he could have signed for Manchester United instead of Dutch defender Jaap Stam. Sure Lorenzo, sure. He didn’t impact too much on my life because he had gone back to Italy after surgery to rehab his injury. Mind you, one day an Italian guy showed up at Ibrox asking to see Walter Smith. He was there for a trial and to say Walter was perplexed was an understatement. The guy wasn’t even a professional player but an associate of Amoruso’s, who had told him to turn up at Ibrox, mention his name and he would be taken on trial. I can still hear Walter laughing now. I think the guy was taken in for one session out of courtesy before being politely shown the door. It was on the return of Amoruso to Glasgow that I came to the conclusion his behaviour was less that of a blustering boaster and more that of a cold, calculating and potentially poisonous personality. Alarm bells started to chime when he moved in with Rino because the nature of his Achilles injury meant his apartment was out of bounds as it had some flights of stairs. One Saturday evening after a game Amoruso was at home and Rino was in Glasgow city centre when the youngster’s father phoned to speak to his son. Amoruso told him his boy was out on the town, something he was doing often, he added. Rino’s father was so concerned about the undercurrent of the conversation, suggesting all was not well with his son, that he took the next plane to Scotland. Let me state for the record Rino was never anything other than an absolute professional. He was 20 years old for goodness sake, and Sunday was a recognised day off. Was he not entitled to spend some time with his friends on a Saturday night in the city centre? There were two episodes in particular that ended for good the friendship between Amoruso and me. One incident almost cost me the most important person in my life and one of them irreparably damaged the relationship between me and Walter Smith. Firstly, my relationship with my girlfriend Monica, now mother to our beautiful son, Christian, entered a rocky period. We were still young, these were ups and downs every serious relationship faces and must confront and, in a short space of time, our love was back on track, the bump in the road thankfully manoeuvred. Stupidly, however, I had spoken to Amoruso about my relationship with Monica, trusting with my personal life someone I never should have trusted. The next day he turned up unannounced at our home to tell Monica it would be best if she packed her bags for a few weeks and returned to Italy because I was struggling in the relationship and it was doing me no good. Monica is no puppet, I think she told him to f*** off and mind his own business. To tell the truth, she never did take to him. She called me once, absolutely aghast, from the supermarket where she had gone shopping with him and his girlfriend of the time, Cristina. Amoruso insisted on paying only for the items in the trolley he would use. Other goods, Cristina’s feminine products and low fat yoghurts and the likes, she had to pay for herself – all this from a guy earning a substantial salary. Amoruso made me sick, however, with a sneaky backstab after I had stupidly poured my heart out to him again, this time about my unhappiness at being out of the picture at Rangers. Why did I trust him? I guess it’s impossible to keep all your feelings locked inside and I was having similar conversations with Rino, Sergio and other friends. The difference is they weren’t running behind my back to tell tales to the manager or chairman. It was a betrayal of trust. I opened up to him, told him I was feeling low because I wasn’t in the team. Foolishly, I told Amoruso I wished the season was over. A couple of days later I was summoned to Walter’s office which was strange in itself because I’d had only two in-depth discussions with him before then. He told me something had clearly altered in my mind and that I wasn’t training as well as I had done. The season wasn’t finished and I had to give him 100 per cent. It clicked with me where he had got his information and I resented the fact he appeared to be showing greater trust in someone who was telling him stories, rather than someone who had scored 36 goals for him to that point. At the time, when I needed him most, Walter tried to play the wrong type of mind games. He could have given me the boost that might have helped lead us to 10-in-a-row but instead I felt undermined that he had listened to Amoruso and our relationship would never recover. The aftermath of that conversation in his Ibrox office led me to rebel like a teenager and, sadly, I started to do things that weren’t so professional. Walter expressed a preference that players wore ties to training and, if possible, were clean shaven. The shaving bit was always going to be a problem as I liked to go seven days at a time before picking up the razor again but as the season drew to a close I stopped lifting it all together. Walter didn’t say a word but my body language screamed of my unhappiness. I have regrets about that and should have done things differently but life cannot be paused, rewound and re-recorded. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/marco-negri-exclusive-ex-rangers-star-5465804 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
barca72 440 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 Enough of these nasty headlines Negri. That's just so DR. We've finally moved on to much better fitba' headlines. Wrong rhag and wrong time to promote your book. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluedell 5,679 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 Negri comes out of this article looking as bad as Amo. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frankie 8,652 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 Pointless mud-slinging but anything to sell a few books I guess. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilledbear 16 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 McCall said the crowd gave him goosebumps not the players. At least that's what I heard in his interview. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian1964 10,761 Posted April 6, 2015 Author Share Posted April 6, 2015 McCall said the crowd gave him goosebumps not the players. At least that's what I heard in his interview. Not like words to be altered by reporters!,he did say the crowd gave him goosebumps 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Real PapaBear 0 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 FWIW, I was working at Ibrox at the time and had frequent dealings with Amoruso, in which he always behaved with class and integrity (and not only because he gave me comps). The stuff about talking to Rino's may have some basis in truth, but that was only because Amo saw Rino as a daft wee laddie - which he was a the time; forever getting speeding tickets and spending money like it was going out of fashion. ( Gazza actually cut up his credit cards and flushed them down the toilet - and when Gazza is telling you that you're going too far, then you know something is not right). Amo had a younger brother of about the same age as Rino and imho anything he did regarding Gattuso was done like an older brother looking out for the kid. Add to that, he was also club captain and saw it as his job to watch out for the youngsters. I can't go into detail, but trust me when I say that I wouldn't trust a word Negri or his girlfriend said about anything. The supermarket story where she would expect someone else to pay for her stuff rings very, very true. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete 2,499 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 Negri comes out of this article looking as bad as Amo. That was exactly my thoughts when reading it. He sounds like a bitter wee boy. People can influence your life but in the end you have the strings in your own hands. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
simplythebest 0 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 On the whole Amo gave Rangers far more loyal service then Negri ever did 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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