The Transalpine footballer, who died at 58, suffered from pancreatic cancer who had forced him to withdraw the national selection, in December 2022.
By Allan Kaval (Rome, correspondent) and Aude Lasjaunias
“I have less time to be an example, now that I know that I will not die from old age.” These words, Gianluca Vialli had slipped them with modesty with presenter Alessandro Cattelan in the program” Una Semplice Domanda “ (” A simple question “) , broadcast since spring 2022 on the Netflix platform. The former Italian international, legend of football in his country, died on the night of Thursday 5 to Friday 6 January, in London, from the pancreatic cancer. He was 58 years old.
This “unwanted travel companion”, as he had described his illness on the rai , accompanied it for five years. On December 14, 2022, he had forced him to withdraw the Italian national selection, including the one nicknamed “Re Leone” (the “Lion King”) was the head of the delegation since 2019.
One of the latest striking images of Gianluca Vialli on land will remain this embrace with Roberto Mancini, the coach of the Squadra Azzurra and a longtime friend, on July 11, 2021, at the Wembley stadium, in the British capital. Italy has just beat England on penalties in the Euro final. The native of Cremona (Lombardy) is in tears. Thirty years earlier, in the same pregnant, the duo had let the coronation in the European Cup of Champion Clubs, the ancestor of the Champions League, spin. A nice nose to history.
59 selections in the national team
As a player, Gianluca Vialli wore the national jersey 59 times and scored 16 goals, but he never experienced the drunkenness of a title with the Azzurri. No more than Roberto Mancini, with whom he made the heyday of the Sampdoria of Genoa in the 1980s. “I Gemelli del Gol” (“The twins of the goal”) nevertheless ignited the spans of the Luigi- stadium Ferraris, leading their club to the victory in the European Cup of the Cup winners in 1990, as Italian champion in 1991, and to the European Cup final of Champions Clubs, therefore, in 1992.
That year, after 321 games and 141 achievements with the Blacerchiati, he heads for the north. Direction Juventus de Turin. An operation around 40 billion lire, a record at the time. With the “Old Lady”, Gianluca Vialli expands her list of a UEFA cup (1993) and a Champions League (1996).
But doping accusations will tarnish the chandelier of Juve. In 1998, Zdenek Zeman, then coach of AS Rome, denounced the abuse of drugs in the world of football and was publicly surprised by the “muscle explosion” of certain players of the team, including Vialli. In November 2004, the chief medical officer of Piedmontese training was sentenced to one year and ten months in prison and a ban on exercising his profession for “sports fraud, abusive and dangerous use for the health of drugs outside of any justification Therapeutic and systematic and intensive administration of erythropoietin “(EPO). It will be released a year later because of a form of form: neither the use of drugs nor the administration of EPO were considered to be crimes at the time of the facts (1994-1998). Gianluca Vialli will recognize, in 2018, in an interview with the Corriere della will be , having taken creatine for a few months. “Like everyone. Legally.”
You have 44.69% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.