Martin Castrogiovanni was sacked for going to Vegas with Zlatan and now opens up on dramatic career

For five years, Martin Castrogiovanni disappeared off the face of the rugby earth. 

Sacked by his club for going to Las Vegas with Zlatan Ibrahimovic, he was never seen again.

Occasionally, the Italy legend would respond to a WhatsApp message. ‘I don’t speak about rugby, amigo,’ he would reply.

As time passed, he lost his phone, changed his number and disappeared into the outback. This week, that all changed, when his old PA put him in touch with Sportsmail for an interview.

During his playing days, you never quite knew what to expect from Castrogiovanni, who won 119 Italy caps across 14 years before retiring in 2016. One week, he interrupted a press conference to call his former coach a ‘c***’. The following week, he invited me to stay at his villa in Toulon.

Now, he is living back home in Rome. He picks up the FaceTime call in a garden restaurant on the edge of the city, where his recognisable long hair catches the light of the afternoon sun.

‘It’s been a long time,’ he says, pointing the camera to his ponytail. ‘I’ve lost some hair but it’s not that bad.’

Our last meeting was in Cardiff in 2015, when Castrogiovanni was a columnist for Sportsmail. It was for a photoshoot at the Italy team hotel and, afterwards, in true Castrogiovanni style, he suggested a few drinks at the infamous Tiger Tiger nightclub.

‘S***, man, where do we start?’ he says of his disappearance and his new life. ‘I am still the same guy, just maybe a bit more — how do you say? — when you think a little bit more before you act.

‘I am married now, you know. Since September. Early on, I did some work on Italian TV — Dancing with the Stars — but I needed some time away from rugby. Travelling, eating, drinking, enjoying life. I needed to find what I wanted to do. I bought a camper van and travelled a lot. Argentina, South America, Europe, everywhere.’

He cruised Europe’s roads in his Hymer motorhome with his three dogs. Castro on Tour: what could possibly go wrong?!

‘On one trip, I went to Spain to say hello to some friends. I drove back through France, on my own with the dogs, and the police stopped me. They saw this long-haired guy alone in a camper van and thought I was a narcotics trafficker.

‘They opened every single thing in my camper van trying to find drugs. They stopped and searched me by the side of the road for three hours! I said, ‘I don’t have anything, guys, I used to play rugby, I can afford to live without selling drugs!’ Eventually they said, ‘Oh, you’re the guy who went to Vegas with Ibra!’.’

The old saying, ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’, has remained true for several years. Castrogiovanni went AWOL from his French club Racing 92’s training in 2016 and jetted off to the States in a luxury plane with one of football’s most famous faces. Now he is happy to lift the lid.

‘It was a good trip, a beautiful trip,’ he laughs. ‘Three days. I met those guys when I was playing in Paris (Ibrahimovic was with Paris Saint-Germain) and we became friends. When they won, they invited me to Vegas and I said, ‘Yes’. Who would say no?

‘We had a good time. A lot of drinks? Yes. We went out? Yes. Play the casino? Yes. Pool party? Yes. Everyone has seen the photos. When I woke up, I had a thousand messages with all the photos.

‘What else do you do in Vegas? I won maybe £500, but I lost my contract with Racing. Maybe I should have handled it differently with my club, but I would do it again.’

Some deemed it unprofessional. For others, it consolidated his status as one of rugby’s cult heroes. But no one expected it to spell the end of his rugby career.

‘That was my last contract,’ says the 39-year-old. ‘When I retired, it felt like a release from my shoulders. Some people stop and they miss it. Rugby gave me a lot, but it took a lot. It was an easy decision to take. I didn’t miss it. I did my time and I needed to stop playing rugby because I’d had enough.

‘As a player, I started out in an amateur era, a different mentality. Rugby changed. I was like a link between the old amateurs and the new professional generation. A lot of the old things disappeared and I wasn’t good with that. You could play 10 years for your club and you were just a f****** number. People Judased you. Coaches p***** me off. I realised that I needed to finish. If I stayed in rugby, I would have ruined everything. I needed my time away, four or five years, and it’s been beautiful.’

Castrogiovanni grew apart from old team-mates, but made new friends. Following his appearance on Dancing With the Stars, he found himself in Italian showbiz circles where he was better known for salsa dancing than scrummaging.

‘I watched maybe three or four rugby games in four years,’ he says. ‘One of them was Argentina. I went to Italy’s game against Scotland last year, but I was in some s****y seats and I barely watched.

‘I always put all my heart into rugby. Sometimes too much blood got to my brain and I didn’t think too much. But I put my heart before everything. When people don’t give you their heart back, it’s hard.

‘I have a rugby camp for kids aged six to 16, but that’s it. At that age, rugby is all about fun. At that age, you can change people. It’s hard to change someone who is still stupid at 20 years old. I wouldn’t enjoy the high-level coaching. The pressure, the politics, the bull****.

‘Slowly I have followed rugby a bit more. I felt like a victim of injustice, but now I have grown up and I realise that is just life sometimes. I am a rugby man and it’s time for me to give something back to the sport. Maybe that means helping the Italian Federation in some way, because it is not in the best moment of its life.’

Coincidentally, Castrogiovanni has agreed to help out the Italian Union with their in-house video production for the Six Nations. Given he has watched less than a game a year since retirement, it seems like a stretch to ask for his views on the current crop.

‘I couldn’t name most of the guys when I was playing!’ he chuckles.

‘Everyone talks s*** about Italy. It’s normal. But Italy is going through a big change. They have a No 8, No 9, No 10 and No 15 who are all young, maybe 21 years old.

‘It won’t happen in the next two years but, if they keep the same coach, they can do well in four years’ time. They need to grow together.

‘Everybody is saying, ‘Italy need to leave the Six Nations’. They might be right, but the truth is there is money on the table so they will not leave the Six Nations. The Italian players are the guys who have the power to make change. They have the power to let the field talk for itself.’

Italy, who visit Twickenham, are still looking for new household names to fill the voids left by Castrogiovanni and his sidekick Sergio Parisse.

Castrogiovanni lost 52 out of 60 Six Nations Tests, but his passion and strength made him a poster boy for the sport. He lost all 13 of his Tests against England, but he still cherishes the memories.

‘It was always fun playing against my Leicester mates in the England team,’ he recalls.

‘When my grandma was still alive, she didn’t like my tattoos, so I used to cover them up with strapping. We played England and it was Martin Corry, Lewis Moody, Ben Kay. Those guys would try to pull off my strapping for the whole game. It was funny. Later on, it was George Ford and Ben Youngs. Benny used to call me ‘Big Time’ but now he is the big time! I would like to say cheeky things to them on the pitch.

‘I loved playing against my friends in those games. With the older guys, we used to say, ‘Win or lose, on the booze’. We drank a lot and the coach was not happy. I am quite old school. If you work hard all week, it’s OK to have a glass of wine after the game. Things have changed now. I like the old way, not the new way.’

Talk returns to Leicester, where Castrogiovanni spent his best playing years from 2006-2013. Has he caught up with his old coach, Richard Cockerill, who he infamously called a ‘c***’? ‘Nah, man,’ he says. ‘Cockers is still coaching? Poor guy. We all change.’

The dust has settled and there are no axes left to grind. Few links remain with the East Midlands, where he opened an Italian restaurant and his sister started a family with old team-mate Logovi’i Mulipola.

‘My sister now lives in Newcastle with Logo and their two kids,’ he says. ‘They have grown a lot. I think they will be rugby players, but they need to choose.

‘I still have the restaurant in Leicester. It’s been a long time since I went there but we will go next time. I have not disappeared for ever. I will come back, man. Just slowly.’