He always said he didn’t want to die before his parents, because the thought of making his loved ones sick destroyed him more than the disease that was consuming him instead. He walked around with a sweater under his shirt, Gianluca Vialli, a way – he thought – to prevent others from noticing that evil, that “ugly thing that he would have liked to do without” that was taking weight away from him and which in the end won, taking him away at 58 years old.
Three weeks after the disappearance of Sinisa Mihajlovic football mourns another shocking death: the former Sampdoria striker, hero of the golden years, made his debut with the Cremonese of his heart, champion with the Juventus shirt, on the pitch and on the bench with Chelsea, surrendered to pancreatic cancer which since 2017 had dramatically marked his fate.
Luca died in a London clinic, where he had been hospitalized a few days before Christmas due to the worsening of his conditions: the fact that the situation was worsening had also made him realize his farewell to the national team on 14 December in which he had announced that he had to leave every job in blue to heal himself. “I have decided to suspend, hopefully temporarily, my present and future professional commitments. The goal is to use all my psycho-physical energies to help my body overcome this phase of the disease” his latest public statements. Leaving that Italy to which he had returned to reunite with his lifelong friend, Robert Mancini: they are the twins who scored the Sampdoria goal together again and to whom life had given other strong emotions. Culminate in the European championship won at Wembley in 2021 and enclosed in a photo that is already history: a hug made of heart and tears that tells the story of the love between the current coach and Vialli.
Vialli, a champion of grace always with a smile on his lips, died “surrounded by his family” (his elderly mother who has been shuttling between Cremona and London in recent weeks), after “five years of illness faced with courage and dignity. His memory and his example will live forever in our hearts” the message of the family members who are always very reserved and will hold a private funeral in the English capital. He leaves his wife Cathryn, married in secret, and daughters Sofia and Olivia who he said he would have loved to bring to the altar. Because Vialli had never given up on setting goals, despite everything. “If you give up once then it becomes a habit” he always repeated, and instead he didn’t want to do it. “I’m afraid of dying – however he had confided on some occasions – I don’t know when the light will go out what will be on the other side. But in a certain sense I’m also excited by being able to find out. I also realize that the concept of death serves to understand and appreciate life”. Because Vialli was like that, an “Italian boy” to use the words of the memory of Gianfranco Zola flown to England and appreciated everywhere: a gentleman, with polite, ironic, affable manners. Someone who knew how to locker room on and off the field. And that with great dignity he had faced the battle with the “uninvited guest”, an unwelcome traveling companion who he hoped would get tired of him.
Vialli faced him without losing his smile, despite the sunken eyes and thinned face. Two months ago the presentation of Marco Ponti’s docu-film ‘The warm season’the story in images of that Magical Sampdoria capable of reaching one step away from heaven. Vialli and Mancini, always together also to recount those years made of goals and hugs, dreams and trophies. Of life, the one Vialli wanted to smell until the end, gracefully, telling his two adored daughters that laughing and helping others is a bit of a sense of happiness. He wanted everyone around him to be happy, hence the disease he had lived it with shamealmost with a sense of guilt. He himself did not resign himself to the idea of hurting others.
THE BROTHERLY RELATIONSHIP WITH ROBERTO MANCINI
The goals. Samp. Friendship. It is a unique and at the same time paradigmatic story of Gianluca Vialli, who died today at the age of 58, and Roberto Mancini. They were called the ‘goal twins’, and they were much more than a Pulici-Graziani combination of the Toro times. Acrobatic strength and refined talent, 312 goals in two with the Sampdoria shirt, yet the numbers are not enough to define the most couple that Italian football has ever known.
Vialli’s hug to his coach friend, Mancini, on 11 July 2021 on the grass at Wembley after the European Championship he told it much better: Gianluca was already ill, but he had made his charisma available to his lifelong friend and his courage in pain to act as a moral guide to a group of footballers in which he probably saw himself again. And he had obtained his revenge, on the field where he had together with Mancini in ’92 lost in the Champions Cup final to Cruyjff’s Barcelona. The curls of Gianluca, a center forward born in 1964 who grew up wearing the grey-red shirt of Cremonese, and the tuft of Roberto, a talent who landed at Mantovani’s court at 17 years old. They had crossed paths in the national youth teams, they had known each other since they were 15 and in blucerchiato it was love at first sightfor a partnership capable of going beyond the usual technical understandings, but also of overcoming individualisms, misunderstandings, bad moments.
A couple of strikers and teammates, but not only. “In that Sampdoria there was a common thread: we always had fun,” Mancini said in ‘La Bella Season’. “We were in love with each other,” he added, not doing the group of friends wrong in admitting that falling in love with Vialli was something else. “We were like brothers.” After two Italian cups won and a reputation for eternal promises, the Milan offer for Vialli arrived in 1989. Mantovani’s no led to a historic pact in the Dorian locker room, Mancini and Vialli are the protagonists (plus Vierchowood): no one will leave until the Scudetto is won. And the championship was in ’91.
“I remember Samp-Pisa in November ’90 – Lombardo reveals – Gianluca returned from a long injury, we were up 2-0: Roberto discards half the opposing team and arrives in front of the empty goal. But he passes the ball to his friend Vialli, to get him back to scoring”. After all, just a seal of friendship. Cultivated on Thursdays at team dinners where cards were played and shirts were chosen, including the one between truth and legend made in cashmere. “My teammates don’t remember it, but I had them made to face the great cold that came from the sea in the stadium”, Vialli said one day. Then Mantovani noticed it, and normality returned. back that innate elegance, not just football.
Mancini and Vialli continued to live like twins even from afar. Opposite paths, similar approach to life. Even when the illness was experienced by the second in solitude (“he didn’t warn me directly, because our frequent phone calls are just to fuck around, like in the Samp days”, revealed Mancini). He except then find himself for a piece of the way in the national team. There the goalscoring twins returned to winning together, and loving each other “even more than before” in moments of pain, as Vialli wrote on Instagram when the national team was about to stay out of the World Cup and his team manager had restarted the most difficult match . Always with a smile of those who know they have a friend.
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