09/28/2026
Diego Maradona predicted he would become one of the best defenders in the world. In 2015, he broke into his own house, seized by tax authorities, to go for a swim in his own pool. In between, he captained Italy to a World Cup title and won a Ballon D'Or.
This is Fabio Cannavaro.
Born in Naples in 1973, he started out as a ball boy at Napoli as a teenager, watching his idols Diego Maradona and Ciro Ferrara. He joined Napoli's youth system and at 17 he was training with the first team, right in the middle of the Maradona era, sharing the dressing room with his idols, alongside a young Gianfranco Zola.
After a hard tackle on Diego Maradona in a training session as a teenager, Maradona predicted he would become one of the best defenders in the world, and gave him a pair of his boots.
After two full seasons at Napoli, the club was forced to sell him due to their financial situation, and in 1995 he moved to Parma, where he became part of the legendary squad of the late 90s, built with financial injections from Parmalat. Alongside players like Buffon, Thuram, Sensini, Veron, Dino Baggio, Ortega, Chiesa and Crespo, he developed into one of the best defenders in the world.
In seven seasons at Parma he won two Coppa Italia titles, the UEFA Cup in 1999, and an Italian Super Cup . From there his career moved through Italy's biggest clubs, two seasons at Inter Milan, two at Juventus under Fabio Capello, before Real Madrid signed him after Calciopoli hit in 2006.
He collected 136 caps for Italy, ranking second in most appearances for Italy ever, only behind Gianluigi Buffon. At Euro 2000 he was one of the best defenders of the tournament, part of an Italian side that conceded almost nothing on the way to the final before losing to France in extra time.
He took over the captaincy from Paolo Maldini in 2002 and carried it through a disappointing Euro 2004, into Germany 2006. That summer he was simply immense, nicknamed Il Muro di Berlino, the Berlin Wall, by Italian fans, lifting the World Cup as captain after beating France on penalties in the final.
He was named FIFA World Player of the Year in 2006 and won the Ballon d'Or that same year, becoming the last defender to date to win the award.
Off the pitch, his life took a couple of strange turns.
The night before the 1999 UEFA Cup final, a videotape was released that showed him getting injected with a substance that turned out to be a legal heart-protection drug used in cardiac surgery, not a banned substance, but an odd enough detail that it's followed him around ever since.
In 2009, he failed a drugs test after Juventus gave him a cortisone injection to treat an allergic reaction to a wasp sting, and the paperwork confirming the medical exemption didn't reach anti-doping authorities in time. He was fully cleared a few weeks later, but for a brief moment he was facing a doping investigation over an insect bite.
Years later, in 2015, Italian authorities investigated his company, FD Service, over more than €1 million in unpaid taxes tied to a luxury boat rental business he ran with his wife, seized his Naples property, including a yacht worth €180,000, and sealed his house.
Cannavaro, his wife and his brother Paolo, also a professional footballer, were caught breaking into his own house, to go for a swim in his own swimming pool. All three were given custodial sentences, ten months for Cannavaro himself, but all sentences were later suspended.
He went on to build a coaching career, taking charge of clubs and national teams across China, Italy, Croatia and the Middle East, currently managing Uzbekistan.
The streets remember Fabio Cannavaro, one of the greatest defenders of all time.
