So many times during his road to A-League coaching, Giancarlo Italiano thought he was lost to the game.
Best known as a fresh face with a bunch of superstitions, Italiano is quietly building a coaching CV he never thought he'd have.
The unheralded Sydneysider was the best-performing Australian coach in the A-League Men last year after taking the helm at Wellington and steering the Phoenix to a expectation-defying second place.
Not bad for a former goalkeeper who never played professionally, who left the sport to train as a criminal lawyer, was sacked as a Sydney FC development coach and who blagged his way into an analyst role with the Nix.
The 41-year-old knows, with his background, he is exceptionally lucky to hold the role.
"At no stage did I ever think being a head coach would be a reality," he tells AAP.
Italiano has his shot after answering a call from Ufuk Talay to move to Wellington as part of his coaching team in 2019.
What happened next has been well-chronicled - earning a handover after Talay's four seasons - but Italiano's unorthodox journey to Wellington is less so.
He began as a goalkeeper of little repute with APIA Leichhardt, St George, Eastern Suburbs, and a season in Queensland, following his mother's work.
"I was a good shot-stopper, good in the air, but I had a calamity every game," he said.
"There was always a brain fade. I had the ingredients to be a good keeper but a poor mentality.
"I was the second keeper for the first team (at Eastern Suburbs), was thereabouts ... but then I got injured and then, school, and then you find a girlfriend and then priorities change."
His playing dreams dwindled, he considered life as a merchant banker - "failed two years of uni and just binned it" - then opted on a law career.
"Then around 24, my best friend died. And then from there, I went off the rails a little bit," he said.
"My dad passed away in that period. It was a very dark period in my life.
"And then (around) 29 and I said, 'Alright, I want something out of life'.
"I started clerking, I re-enrolled into law school, and then in my 30s, I started coaching. Studying full-time, working full-time. Doing both."
It's a testament to Italiano's renewed mindset that after a few years detached from both the educational system and the sport, he thrived in both.
Not that he retained any hope of becoming a professional coach.
"I wanted just to be a criminal lawyer," he said.
"You're dealing with people that obviously been accused of doing wrong things, but they also need a human side to represent them and I felt like that's something I could probably excel in."
He snuck in the door at APIA as an under-16 goalkeeping coach, but after four early season losses, ran that team as no one else wanted to.
"I took over and then we won like 16 in a row ... and I got sacked on the last day with this team because I didn't commit for the year after," he said, then moving around clubs.
"I was gonna just finish my last couple of years at uni, focus, and be an adult."
Then Rob Stanton - a mate from APIA and now Newcastle Jets coach - needed help at the Sydney FC under-20s.
"It's all relationships," Italiano said.
Suddenly he had them with serious figures in Australian football, including "real boss" Graham Arnold.
"There was John Crawley. Andrew Clark. Stanto ... I was just part of it every day. I just used to sit in the office, Stanto would talk, I'd listen to Arnie, and to be fair, I was out of my depth completely," he said.
He was put forward for the under-20 coaching job and won over the skeptical Sydney FC board.
"I just came up with a line from Arrigo Sacchi, one of my favourite coaches, an Italian legend, who never played at a high level, and his famous quote is, 'I don't need to be a horse to be a jockey'."
At the Sky Blues, Italiano got support not only from Stanton but Steve Corica, now at the helm of Kiwi rivals Auckland FC, but was ultimately shown the door after a heartbreaking last-day loss to Western Sydney which saw them miss a grand final.
"That was it. That was the end. I'd quit football. For me, I thought I can't (move up) any higher," he said.
And then, another intervention for the footballing gods, as Italiano bumped into Talay by chance at Sydney Olympic.
"We rarely spoke at Sydney, like he's a hard character to mingle with, and one day he goes, 'Chief, I might be in line for the Wellington coach'," he said.
Two conversations later, one with his mother and another with a good mate, and he was on the plane to New Zealand.
"They said word-for-word the exact same thing. It was weird," Italiano recalls.
"They go ... 'go there, they make you the main assistant and then you'll be the head coach'.
"The rest is history. It was a long way to get here."
Italiano said he also flirted with walking away during the tough lockdowns of the pandemic.
His decision to stay on was canny, with a revelatory first season in charge.
A win rate of 56 per cent - admittedly early in his coaching career - puts him second of all Australian coaches in the A-League era, behind only Patrick Kisnorbo (57 per cent) and ahead of legends like Arnold (55), Kevin Muscat (51) and Ange Postecoglou (50).
While Italiano's road to a senior A-League coaching role has been unconventional, he swears by the lessons learned - both personal and through his law background.
"In all my jobs, you come across a vast number of personalities and different types, really poor to really rich ... and the law side sharpened my mind to understand people," he said.
"I've seen a lot. I've experienced a lot. And even in my own life without getting into it, I had a lot of f***en s*** happen when I was younger.
"As crazy as it sounds, I think people that commit crimes are probably the ones you want to help the most ... it's almost like a call for help.
"They don't have the control to act in the way society wants, but they might be struggling because they have tough parents or lives and no one understands that.
"The way society deals with these people is to just palm them.
"Helping people or even just listening to people is such a powerful thing. A lot of people are just lonely, mate, or feel disenfranchised."
Italiano's path also means he knows how fleeting his shot at coaching could be.
"Always in the back of my mind, I'm like, 'this can always end tomorrow'," he said.
