Benito Carbone: ‘RIP Carbone’ dressing room message forced me to leave Sheffield Wednesday for Aston Villa

Former Sheffield Wednesday forward Benito Carbone has told us that team-mates vandalised his changing room seat while he was with the Owls, prompting him to leave the club for Aston Villa. 

Carbone, who spent three years at Sheffield Wednesday before leaving for Aston Villa in 1999, told us: “In my last season, I had a little bit of a problem with my Sheffield Wednesday team-mates in that time. Maybe it was my fault, maybe not…

“I am sure of just one thing – I remember with manager Danny Wilson, before we left to play in London, the day before I went and asked him for permission to go to Italy after the game to see my family. He said to me, ‘You can go, but listen, Benni, you know that you are one of the best players we have in the team, it’s very important tomorrow that we don’t lose the game, it’s very important you play well.’

“Anyway, we arrived in the dressing room for the game, and he says the formation, and I wasn’t in the line-up! I was angry and asked him, ‘why did you tell me yesterday I was the most important player, and now I’m not in the team?!’ But I was really stupid, I was young. I understand now what I did, I left the dressing room and my team-mates and I went home.

“But when I was back in Sheffield, one of my team-mates – I don’t know who, and I don’t ever want to know – wrote on my towels on my seat in the dressing room, ‘R.I.P. Bella Italia Benito Carbone.’

“That was the thing that destroyed the relationship between me and the dressing room, between me and my team-mates in the last season. It’s why I left Sheffield for Aston Villa and started my new experience with them. But I made a mistake in what I did.”

Evading British drinking culture a ‘mistake’

Carbone enjoyed three successful years with Sheffield Wednesday, scoring 25 goals in 96 appearances, but admits he made a “mistake” by not immersing himself in the team’s culture off the pitch – particularly when it came to drinking socially.

“This was one of my mistakes,” he said. “You need to respect the culture where you go to play and work. At that time, I was very young, so when my team-mates invited me to go out to drink I would say, ‘no, I don’t like to drink, I don’t like beer, I don’t like wine.’

“That was wrong of me, it was a big mistake. When they invite you, you have to go with them because you need to do activities like a family, and if you don’t like alcohol, you can drink coke or water. It maybe would have had a big impact if I had spent more time with my teammates, it’s an important part of the culture.”