Di Stefano's undying love for Dundee

Published on Tuesday 5 August 2003 01:00

YOU had a sneaking suspicion this might be the case. While near neighbours and great rivals Dundee United kept Scottish football in thrall with a signing policy that was so greatly out of step with their peers, Dundee remained uncharacteristically silent on the other side of the street. We now know this to be the calm before the storm, the timespan required for further intrigue to brew around a football club to which controversy seems forever destined to cling.

Trinidad and Tobago central defender Brent Sancho’s arrival gave some cause for media interest, together with Zurab Khizanishvili’s long drawn-out transfer to Rangers and Fabian Caballero’s no-show on their tour of the United States. The Dens Park club’s pre-season games against Kettering Town and Northampton Town did not, on the face of it, promise much in the way of headline news either. Or so we thought.

At the Sixfields stadium in Northamptonshire, where Dundee defeated a battling Northampton Town, something was stirring in the shadows. Peter Marr and Jim Connor had been joined in the directors’ box by Giovanni di Stefano and his son Milan. While Milan formed an attachment to the club during his time at Gordonstoun in Morayshire, his father was there for reasons other than wishing to see what shape Jim Duffy’s side are in ahead of the approaching season.

Instead he was receiving an offer to finally join the Dundee board, having seen his original attempts to buy into the Dens Park club skewered due to the storm of protest which erupted as a result of his less than wholesome associates. Among them were numbered Arkan, the notorious Serbian warlord who was assassinated three years ago. He has also advised the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic on his prosecution for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.

His current business contacts, due to his work as a criminal lawyer, include serial killer Harold Shipman and road rage murderer Kenneth Noye. This is the Real Madrid of Rogue Galleries. Di Stefano knows this, and claims it to be proof of how successful a criminal lawyer he is.

Also attesting to this is the fact he succeeded in prising open the door to his own cell, having been convicted of fraud charges. The 395 days he spent in jail before being freed on appeal have, he says, only made him stronger. He comes to Dundee with fire in his belly, and a desire to put the club back on the map.

It is ironic that the next step in this process involves Dundee’s visit next week to Albania for their first major European tie in almost 30 years. It is to Eastern Europe where the Di Stefano story inevitably plots a path, with the lawyer deeply involved in Serbia during its brutal civil war. The tale does not end here, though. It takes in both Iraq and Palestine, with Di Stefano having met on business both Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat. And now he has made it, finally, to Dundee.

Di Stefano won’t travel up from his base in London for Saturday’s SPL opener at Motherwell. He will, however, take in his first match at Dens Park a week on Sunday, with Dundee due to face Dunfermline. Before that he will arrive in the city to be formally unveiled as the club’s newest director.

"Dundee FC and I have been closely pursuing a relationship, an understanding since 1999," said Di Stefano yesterday. "But we have not been married and now we are. I have never abandoned Dundee and never will. Dundee are in my blood. This will be a family holding, one which my children will inherit from me. At least they had better do. I will haunt them from the grave if not."

His name has already spooked some fans of Dundee. In 1999, when news of his relationship with the club first broke, some fans declared they would hand in their season tickets should the link-up become an official one. Now, though, the resistance seems to have died somewhat, with fans simply excited by the prospect of new investment.

Di Stefano would not be drawn on what investment he will bring Dundee and when asked if he was worth the reported figure of 300million, replied: "I hope not. I have just filled out a tax return form for 450 million!" He continued: "Listen, if I can buy 100 worth of groceries then I consider myself rich. That is how I look at it."

However, it is not how Dundee fans will view it. They have been bitten many times before, so those who have already allowed themselves to be consumed by joy might be accused of naivete. A year ago Bob McCallum, Britain’s self-styled "answer to Bill Gates", declared himself ready to gift Dundee 100millon ahead of the expected success of his internet service provider, Jini Global. The Mormon’s company sponsored Dundee for five months before the relationship was terminated amid claims that McCallum had hit serious financial trouble.

Sometimes Di Stefano seems as given to the elated rattle spouted by McCallum, and before him flamboyant owners Angus Cook and Ron Dixon. "At the Scottish Cup final I saw 20,000 Dundee fans," Di Stefano said, recalling his first experience of watching the club in the flesh. "I want to be in a position this season to be able to ask Rangers, Celtic or Hampden Park for permission to use their stadium because we cannot fit all our supporters into Dens Park. At the first home game I will be there." And so, one suspects, will be the jury.