The national coach met and embraced Gianluca Vialli for the last time on 29 December: the painful story
Since yesterday the news of the disappearance of Gianluca Vialli, many have thought about how Roberto Mancini took it. The two shared a whole life, sporting and otherwise. Unique emotions lived together that made them practically brothers. In today’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport, there is an interview with the coach of the national team, in which he recounts the last meeting with his friend, which took place in London on 29 December.
It was 2017 when Gianluca Vialli discovered he had a pancreatic cancer. Since then he has begun a very hard struggle, made up of painful and debilitating treatments.
In the 2020 the former striker had a truce. The disease seemed to have vanished into thin air and he hadn’t thought for a moment about returning to the field. And he did it together with his “twin”, Robert Manciniin the expedition of the European championship won by them and by the Italian national team.
L’hug between Gianluca and Roberto after the cup victory, with both in tears, will forever remain one of the strongest images of Italian sport.
There was actually another hug, last December 29, when Mancini took over joined his close friend in the London clinic where he was hospitalized and where yesterday he took his last breaths. A hug that they both knew would be their last.
Mancini’s pain for the death of Gianluca Vialli
The coach of the Italian national team told Andrea Elefante de The Sports Gazette of that them last meetingwhich took place as mentioned last December 29th.
In reality, the CT wanted to go to London a week earlier, before Christmas, but Vialli had told him not to wait because he wanted to concentrate all his strength in the last stage of the fight. Of the last meeting he then said:
He was powerless, with little voice, but very lucid. A lion to the last. We talked a bit about everything, he even asked me how the December internship with the youngsters went. In fact, he filled me with questions. He wanted to know everything, he wanted to know the progress of our project.
A few weeks after Mihajlovic’s disappearance, Mancini had to deal with another painful loss.
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