PDC fired over offensive tattoo

  • by Staff Writer
  • Thursday, 15th September 2016

Ex-Hammer Paolo Di Canio has been suspended by Sky Italia for revealing an offensive tattoo live on air.

The former Italian winger, who spent four years at West Ham between 1999 and 2003 was censored by the sports channel - for whom he works as a pundit - after a tattoo on his left arm, which referred to former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, was displayed on TV.

Di Canio, who was wearing a short-sleeved Fred Perry t-shirt when the controversy erupted, bears an engraving on his upper arm that reads 'Dux' - the Latin translation of 'Il Duce', the name adopted by the former head of a once-fascist Italian state.


Jacques Raynaud, the executive vice president of Sky Sport and Sky Media Italy apologised to anyone who had been offended by the sight of the tattoo. "We made a mistake and we apologise to all those whose sensibilities we have offended," he said.

"After talking at length with Di Canio, and despite his professionalism and football skills, we decided together to terminate our collaboration."


On Il Duce

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was the leader of Italy's National Fascist Party and Prime Minister between 1922 and 1943. For the first three years following his election Mussolini operated as the country's democratically-elected leader before creating a dictatorship in 1925 that was to last for 18 years before he was arrested and jailed by order of the King, Crown Prince Umberto II.




A former Communist sympathiser, Mussolini - a vital ally of Germany and Hitler during World War Two - was executed two years later at Lake Como by Italian Communists after he was recaptured having escaped from prison two years earlier.

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