Still fall. At least Pele lived beyond the proverbial three points of his and she ten years. However, the football world has also lost his three giants one after another.Serbian free-kick specialist and Italian club coach Sinisha
Mihajlovic died in Rome at the age of 53. Scottish striker Frank McGarvey has died at the age of 66. And now Gianluca Vialli, admired in London with his adopted son from Italy, has died at the age of 58.
They were once among the healthiest men. Cancer took them all.
And while we feared it was coming, Vialli’s death on Friday was the biggest
Horrifying.The stabbing pain is made worse because he was a nice guy and because I remember his enthusiastic embrace with his lifelong companion Roberto
Mancini when Italy won the European Championship at Wembley aged just 18
months ago.
So many footballers owe everything to this game, including Pele. Vialli was different. Writer Gianni Brera called him “Stradivari” because Vialli was born rich in Cremona, Lombardy, where Antonio Stradivari made the world’s greatest violin.
If football is like music, it was this coincidence that Vialli and Mancini met in Sampdoria as teenagers. Vialli, a winger-turned-goal-scorer with acrobatic flair, Mancini, who is cool in the pair, and a sniper who can sense the movements of his mates and pick him on the pass. By the time they led the Genoese club to the Serie A title in 1991, all Italy was to call them ‘i Gemelli del Gol’, the twins of goals.
I remember Paolo Mantovani, the aristocratic shipping magnate who financed Sampdoria’s escape from poverty, told him at his home in the Genoese hills that players were like his sons. Not only Vialli and Mancini, but also other players he has signed such as Liam Brady, Trevor Francis, Graeme Souness and Tonino Cerezo. All Mantovani asked was to do for him what his childhood dreams never allowed him to do.
And we recall Gianni Agnelli, the mighty Juventus paymaster, coveting what Mantovani saw in his players. “He knows every muscle in every player,” he said. Vialli actually joined Juve when his stint at Sampdoria was over, as he often bought what Agnelli coveted. By the way, the transfer fee was his £12.5 million, which he set a world record in the 1990s. Imagine 30 years and hundreds of millions of years from now.
Then came Chelsea, where he plays, manages players, then manages. On why he moved to London at the age of 32, he said: I live for indescribable emotions and games give me that. ” London was an Indian summer for him. He married a South African model, had two daughters, and fell in love with the Fulham lifestyle forever. After leaving Chelsea, he briefly managed Watford before moving into television co-commentary.
Stradiviari was not the norm for a sports career.his life began, grew up
Castles and bourgeois wealth fostered far-away independence
Even football stardom. He chose his path and was able to articulate why.
He first moved from Lombardy to Genoa, turning down the legacy of Juventus and AC Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi. At the moment, he is more interested in becoming a person than anything else. ” And they say football is not a game for intellectuals!
Anyway, in eight seasons at Sampdoria, 223 games and 85 goals, he
What kind of person was he and what kind of player was he? Mantovani found players to surround and serve the twin goals and hired Yugoslavia’s Vjadin Boszkov.
Coach, blend their talents.
Of course, Italian national team trainer Enzo Bearzot got the spotlight, and when Vialli finally moved to Juventus, his teammates included Roberto Baggio, Alessandro Del Piero and Fabrizio Ravenelli. And the coaching at Juventus was even better, at least in the intensive fitness regimen that Marcello Lippi imposed on Vialli. I decided that I needed to add weight and muscle.
Could that harsh regimen weaken the disease resistance athletes need to stay safe and alive, just like we do? Three other famous athletes may have been former athletes prone to diseases that ended their lives prematurely.
In any case, Gianluca Vialli’s goal at Stamford Bridge in August 1997 was a ‘team goal’ scored by three Chelsea players within ten seconds.
Dutch keeper Ed de Gooy pulled off a Barnsley corner kick and threw the ball half the length of the pitch to Dan Petrescu. The Romanian wingback took control of the ball and used the outside of his foot to direct the ball into Vialli’s pass 35 yards ahead of him.
The road had already been dictated by the Italians, and the run decided Petrescu’s heart. And then Vialli shielded the ball from his opponent, letting it bounce once, twice before hitting it past the stranded opponent’s goalkeeper.
Three Chelsea players have shown in seconds why English football has become the Mecca of the world’s game. Three foreigners connected by instinct. Vialli had been sidelined by Chelsea for several weeks prior to that date due to a disagreement with manager Ruud Gullit.
Vialli scored four goals in that match. He then eloquently declined a media invitation to say he might have proven a point.
