Paolo Odogwu: I?m all-in for Italy. In England you can get brainwashed
After losing his job with Wasps, the former England youth wing is ready to play for the Azzurri after qualifying through his half-Italian father
Will Kelleher
Deputy Rugby Correspondent
Friday July 14 2023, 2.30pm, The Times
In a parallel rugby universe, Paolo Odogwu might still be the Wasps star pushing for an England debut this summer and a spot in their World Cup squad.
However, the sliding-doors moment when he and 166 others were made redundant last October when Wasps fell into administration means that this week, Odogwu wore a new shirt for the third time in nine months ? this time the blue of Italy.
After the collapse of Wasps, Odogwu spent eight months at Stade Fran?ais, before moving to Benetton Treviso. But it is his latest switch that is the most significant.
Odogwu, a former England youth international who briefly trained with the senior squad around the time of the 2021 Six Nations, is now all in for the Azzurri. The back qualifies for his new nation via his half-Italian father who everyone calls Steven, but is actually named Stefano.
Now 26 and after a turbulent nine months, Odogwu finds himself in the tiny town of Pergine Valsugana in northern Italy, training in a 40-degree heatwave and desperate to prove to Kieran Crowley, the head coach, that he is worthy of a Test debut and World Cup selection.
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?Since the Wasps situation, being able to move country, experience a whole new culture, it opened my eyes,? Odogwu says. ?Growing up in England, in English rugby, you?re almost brainwashed that this is the only route: ?I have to play in the Premiership, I have to follow this path?.
?Being forced into leaving makes you think, ?This isn?t the only league, the only opportunity in the world. I can go my own way, expand my rugby knowledge, cultural knowledge, live in different places, with a different lifestyle?. It?s perfect timing.?
Next season at upwardly-mobile Benetton he will be joined by former Wasps players Jacob Umaga, Malakai Fekitoa, Marcus Watson and Matteo Minozzi.
Odogwu could have returned to England, where he started his career with Leicester Tigers before joining Sale Sharks and then Wasps, but having lived in Paris he felt no great pang for home. The pain of what happened to Wasps, and the collapse of Worcester Warriors and London Irish, proved the Premiership is still a volatile environment.
?It was not really where I felt like I needed to be,? he says. ?I enjoyed living away from England so much I wanted to keep that going. As much as I wanted to play for Wasps for the rest of my career, it didn?t happen, so now I have to have a different plan.
?I needed to be somewhere where I was wanted, where I would enjoy my life, my rugby and was able to do the things I wanted to do.
?I still find it weird seeing the Wasps boys in other teams? kits. It feels so long ago even though it was the season just gone.
?Finally, when we?re settled, the London Irish thing happened. I almost had PTSD seeing the tweets building up to that ? it was exactly what was said for us. I thought, ?They?re definitely going under?, and then it happened.
?The English league has its own problems. There seems to be a serious lack of organisation in what anyone wants to do, and not having any sort of clarity with relegation and promotion, you think, ?Do I really want to go back into that?? I can go somewhere else and not worry if I?m going to have a job, not based on performance but the business.?
Italy it was, then. Odogwu himself set that move in motion, making his intentions clear to Crowley who had previously floated his name as a possible Italian recruit. While playing for Stade, he contacted the New Zealander.
?I said, ?I?m all in,? ? Odogwu says. ?It was all good me hoping they picked me, but they wouldn?t know if I wanted to play. I wanted to make sure they knew so it gave them the option, and I knew I?d not left it up to chance.?
Initially, Crowley told Odogwu that he would stick with the group that beat Wales in the 2022 Six Nations, then Australia that autumn and built through this year. But he later had a rethink and, keen to include another powerful outside back, Odogwu was in.
His Italian roots run deep. In the 1950s, Odogwu?s grandfather emigrated from Nigeria to Italy to become a doctor. As a black man in a country that had recently deposed and executed the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, it was ? to put it mildly ? an interesting time to arrive.
There he married an Italian and they settled in Bologna, where Stefano was born. While Odogwu?s grandparents later relocated to Nigeria, the family roots were laid in Italy.
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Stefano also became a doctor, in England where Paolo was born in 1997, but every Easter returned to Italy. The feasts, including Nonna?s hand-made tortellini, were epic.
?We?d go to my dad?s cousins to stay with them for a few weeks to eat, chill out,? Odogwu says. ?You?d come back a couple of kilos heavier every time.?
Odogwu is no Italian imposter, then. He likes to think he is closing the circle that his grandfather opened, emulating his move to Italy for better prospects.
His Italian is ? the swear-words first, as ever ? supplementing the French he honed in Paris. The flanker Seb Negri, who went to Gloucestershire?s Hartpury College, helps with the trickier translations.
Alongside the scrum half Stephen Varney (born in Wales), Harlequins?s English-born lock Dino Lamb, the wing Monty Ioane from Melbourne, and Epalahame Faiva, the hooker, who was raised in Auckland, Odogwu has settled into an eclectic squad.
?There?s no, ?You?re not Italian enough to be in this team? ? especially in this day and age,? he says. ?It?s more, ?What are you willing to give for this squad?? Definitely what it should be. Everyone is mixed, and everywhere changes.?
Odogwu has quickly spotted the Italian ?brotherhood?, and the fresh foundations built by Crowley. After a week in camp he is already speaking bullishly about Italy?s prospects at the World Cup in France, where they begin their group A campaign against Namibia on September 9.
He has watched the under-20s flanker and captain, David Odiase, delivering rousing pre-match speeches where he roars about the team as ?Italian soldiers? and their ?fight for the respect of our nation? and gets it.
?That?s one of our key points ? not being that underdog, disrespected anymore,? Odogwu says. ?We need to get to the point where it?s not a shock victory any more, where people think, ?Oh shit we?re playing Italy this week, it?s on.? ?
It is not lost on Odogwu that if he goes to the World Cup ? where Italy face a tough group of New Zealand, France, and Uruguay, as well as the Namibians ? it will come a year after Wasps folded and his life changed.
That jolt has afforded him a philosophical outlook, as he steps into another new world.
?I like to live in the moment, not worry about what I?m doing, what has happened before or is going to happen, as we never know,? Odogwu says. ?If I go it?ll be a pretty emotional moment as it?ll be full circle. It would be pretty crazy to reflect on all that has happened.?
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