Dinner with Fabio Cannavaro was fabiolicious!

I am going to be brutally honest and tell you that when I got an invite to the dinner with the Italian Football team, I was totally clueless who was who in the Italian zoo. I actually went through Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo and FIFA websites just to have a clue, but when I realised I cant even pronounce the guys names, I felt hopeless and told myself I will get there and figure it all out. When I asked Sports Editor Archie Henderson who was who, he also seemed to know the main people but he also joked by saying: "Dont worry Gabi, as long as you know that all their names have a elli at the end, you will be okay." And being me, I just laughed it off and thought maybe he was right. So I drovemyself to the venue in pretoria with friends and collegues Zinhle and Pumza, sure we got stuck in traffic, travelled with directions that took us in circles, but we made it in one piece after passing dingy roads that were filled with potholes.

READ what happened:

Local beauties take Fabio Cannavaro to heart at welcome dinner

SCORES of beautiful young women would not let gorgeous Italy football captain Fabio Cannavaro out of their sight and even followed him to the bathroom.

Some, dressed in skimpy cocktail dresses despite the freezing weather on Tuesday night, were clamouring for hugs and pictures with the 35-year-old hunk.

South African Breweries and the City of Tshwane threw the team a dinner to welcome them to Pretoria, where they are staying during the Confederations Cup. They also invited 260 other people to the do to make it a bit of a party.

But there was one woman who did not appear desperate to get an eyeful of arguably the most gorgeous football side on Earth.

Tshwane mayor Gwen Ramokgopa arrived an hour late and almost missed them.

Of the 50-member contingent from the team nicknamed the Azzurri (the Blues), Cannavaro was by far the most popular with the women.

He did not seem to mind the attention, though, as he smiled and dished out embraces.

Through his interpreter, who only translated a small part of his lengthy Italian address, Cannavaro said: “I like South Africa and would like to see more of it. But since we arrived yesterday [Monday], none of us have had a chance to see much of it. We are hard at work practising for the game we are going to play.”

The Italians arrived at the venue under Tshwane Metro Police escort, wearing their white and navy team tracksuits.

The decor reflected the colours of the Italian flag with white tablecloths and red roses with green foliage .

The guests of honour skipped the four- course meal though — which included ostrich fillet strips on Italian pastry, pasta alfredo, kingklip in phyllo pastry, and pistachio mascarpone cheese cake — with Cannavaro saying they were on a “special diet”.

They did not hang around with 2010 World Cup ambassador Mark Fish and former Miss South Africa Vanessa Carreira for long, leaving after just 90 minutes .

Cannavaro said they “had to wake up early for training”.

The team presented Ramokgopa with gifts. She gave coach Marcello Lippi a beaded green and white vuvuzela and Cannavaro a small African drum.

“I suspected that they would come bearing gifts from Italy and for them we also have gifts and hope that they can learn to play the vuvuzela and that Fabio can learn how to play the drums,” she said. -The Times