Man City accused of going from ‘beautiful to boring’ as outspoken Paolo Di Canio weighs in on ‘ruining Italian football’ row between Pep Guardiola and Fabio Capello

There has been a war of words between the ex-England manager and Man City boss, with the former claiming that Guardiola has "done a lot of harm" to football. Capello has not held back in his assessment of the Spaniard. Now, Di Canio has weighed in on the debate and he can see both sides of the argument.

Di Canio, who was speaking exclusively to GOAL on behalf of www.footitalia.com, said: "I meet Fabio every week because we work for Sky Sports together. We cover Champions League and we are in studio together. And we have a chat before and after the match, you know? And it became tougher than the last few years. And they really believe that. Also it was mentioned again recently and Guardiola wasn't really happy with what he said. But I went straight to the point in a clear way.

"But these things can happen. It is good for the show, for the curiosity of people who are trying to understand a different generation or manager in a different period of time. But it is just an opinion. In some way. I don't want to say Capello is completely right because he comes from another period of football. We can say he is old school but not in a bad way because he was a great manager 25 years ago."

Di Canio's argument is simply that Capello believes in a different style of football that was prominent during the best years of his management career. In the interview, he added: "It was a different period, different rules. Everything is different. But Guardiola was good and capable to use the new rules. Obviously he had the chance to manage top clubs in Europe. And to have the players every time he wanted with a specific characteristic to deliver his philosophy.

"And get them to play the football he loved. But to be honest, for a few years, watching them play was beautiful. But sometimes it's boring because the same team that won four in a row, the Premier League, Champions League, now with exact same players. They look fragile.

"If we are in 11 and we can go and face Manchester City, probably we can get the result. You think the difference we can see now, but it’s obvious what we have saw in recent years is absolutely amazing for me.

"I think to myself that everybody wants to copy this style. Sometimes I saw some mistakes from not only low level English Premier League teams, also in Italy. But why? You can have a mixture, because now we start seeing people come back and looking at old style football in a modern way."

Di Canio admitted that Guardiola was not best pleased with the comments made by Capello, but there is no denying the level of success that the Spanish head coach has had in his career. It is a compliment that so many have decided to mimic his tactics in an effort to replicate his achievements and will continue to do so, even if Guardiola is in a tougher period of life in management.