In an exclusive interview, the former World Cup winner talks about taking Uzbekistan to the 2026 World Cup and a project close to his heart in Naples
zbekistan may have made history by qualifying for the World Cup for the first time in the country’s 34 years of independence in June after losing only once in 15 qualifiers. But they then had a problem: Timur Kapadze stepped down and they needed a head coach for next year’s tournament.
They turned to Fabio Cannavaro, Italy’s 2006 World Cup-winning captain and Ballon d’Or winner, who has had a rich and varied coaching career and was ready to take on the challenge of managing a nation still taking its first steps in international football.
We meet on an early November afternoon in Naples, outside the gates of the Centro Paradiso, in the Soccavo district. The former Napoli, Juventus and Real Madrid centre-back arrives on his scooter and ushers us inside what was once the training ground of Maradona’s Napoli. There he is in charge of a project that is building a student halls of residence and, as part of that, is bringing back to life a football pitch: the one that, after the looting that followed the club’s bankruptcy, became unrecognisable.
