Big Interview: QPR defender Gabriele Angella

by Chris Dunlavy

GABRIELE Angella barks an incredulous laugh when I ask if he’ll get a chance to hop back to his native Florence over the festive period.

“Home?” says the QPR defender. “How can I go home? We play. Again and again. The 26th, the 28th, the 1st of January – I don’t even remember. This country is crazy.”

Fair to say then that the 26-year-old isn’t a fan of the British sporting calendar. Yet three years since his arrival from Udinese, the former Italy Under-21 star has fully embraced his adopted home.

“I love it here,” says Angella, who is at Loftus Road on a season-long loan from Watford. “London is a great city. There is always something happening.

“And I love the football. At this level in Italy, it is very different. Here, the fans are amazing, the stadiums are always full. I have been here three years now and I have never once wanted to go back to Italy. I want to stay here as long as I can.”

Even a slate-grey Watford winter doesn’t get him dreaming of Tuscan terracotta and azure blue skies. “No, no” he insists. “It is colder in Italy than it is in England. I looked at the weather forecast the other day and it is four degrees in Florence. Here it was 12. My family can’t believe it!”

Three months ago, Angella was the one left stunned. A mainstay of the Watford defence that won promotion to the Premier League last season, the 6ft 4ins centre-back’s sound technique and aerial prowess looked tailor-made for the top flight.

Yet incoming Hornets manager Quique Sanchez Flores felt otherwise, signing a job lot of defenders and omitting Angella from his 25-man squad.

That roster can be adjusted in January but the Spaniard’s willingness to grant QPR a season-long loan in September suggests a bleak future at Vicarage Road. Isn’t Angella bitter that the Premier League dream he worked so hard to achieve has been kicked into the mud?

“No, I’m not disappointed,” he says. “No player gets to choose whether he plays or not and every year is different. What I did last year doesn’t matter now.

“At the time, it was a bad moment. But football is a short career. If you think every moment about the past, you won’t look forward and you won’t be happy.

“I chose to come here and I am very happy. After that, we’ll see. This year, it wasn’t my turn to play in the Premier League. Next year, maybe it will be. That is the way I think.”

The Hornets are flying under Flores, whose appointment in June made him Watford’s fifth different manager in the space of 12 months.

Having started last season under Giuseppe Sannino, the Hertfordshire outfit swiftly piled through Oscar Garcia, Billy McKinlay and finally Slavisa Jokanovic, the constant upheaval seemingly no impediment to success.

And having averaged a manager a month at Loftus Road, Angella is hoping that history won’t repeat itself under the high tempo tactics of new gaffer Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.

Shaping up: QPR boss Hasselbaink works on shape and tactics a lot in training, says Angella (Photo by Action Images)

“It is a strange situation,” says Angella, who was signed by Chris Ramsey, dropped by caretaker Neil Warnock and is now back in favour under Hasselbaink.

“But if you look what happened to Watford then it is a good sign, no? Everybody knows we changed a lot but the team was very good, very talented and intelligent.

“We knew 100 per cent what we had to do on the pitch and I think it helped that we had a lot of international players. At Watford, we only had maybe five or six Englishmen playing regularly.

“That gave us a different mentality – we were very organised and tactically aware because that is how you need to play international football.

“Everybody covered each other, everybody read the game.

“If you have that and the kind of quality that we had, I think you can do well whoever the manager is.

“Here at QPR, I think here we have very good quality. From what I see, the players are as good as Watford’s. What we didn’t have was the organisation.

“But with this coach (Hasselbaink), we will get that. He is very good, someone who works a lot on the pitch, on shape and tactics.

“He played for Holland, and at the highest level in England. He has that international mentality that I talked about with Watford.

“I know it is difficult to say we will win promotion now. Things are still looking a bit dodgy.

“But step by step, game by game, I think we will improve. And there is lots of time left for QPR to return to the Premier League. I think we can.”

Key to making that step will be Charlie Austin, the striker who returned from injury with a brace in Tuesday’s 2-2 draw with Brighton, taking his season’s tally to ten goals in 16 games.

The 26-year-old, who netted 18 Premier League goals last term and is valued by the Hoops at £15m, has vowed to stay at Loftus Road until the end of the season but, with his contract set to expire in May, the Rangers board may have other ideas.

Hasselbaink admitted as much at his Press briefing on Thursday and Angella has urged Hoops fans not to worry about the loss of their talisman.

“Charlie is a big striker for us, someone who scores every time he gets the ball,” said the defender, who began his career with Empoli.

“He got 20 goals last year, now he has ten. That shows his quality, his strength.

“He is very important but nobody knows what will happen over the next month. I am sure every team in England would like to have him.

“If somebody offers enough money maybe he will go, but now is not the time to worry about one player.

“Now is the time to think about the whole team. And if Charlie is not here, it gives the chance to someone else.”

Someone like Angella, who, after being frozen out at Watford, then sidelined at QPR, is now firmly back in the picture. No wonder he isn’t keen on going home.

“I am playing,” he says with a laugh. “That is all I want. That is why I came. Now it is time to show that I deserve to stay here by getting this club back into the Premier League.”

And, this time, playing there, too.

*This article was originally published in The FLP on 20 December 2015.