Gianluca Vialli did not lose his battle with cancer, because for him it was never a battle to begin. “I don’t want to fight cancer,” he told the Guardian in 2020, “because it would be too big and powerful an enemy. I feel this is a journey. It’s about travelling with an unwanted travel companion until hopefully it gets bored and dies before me.”
A passage that began with the discovery of a pancreatic tumour in 2017 came to an end on Friday, as Vialli died at the age of 58. More than once it had appeared that he would outlast his fellow voyager, with doctors giving an all-clear in 2018 and again in 2020, but on each occasion the cancer returned.
There was a time when the imagery of combat might have appealed to Vialli, who said he could have been a soldier if football had not worked out. His talent took him down a more carefree path. “Don’t believe anyone who says football is a war,” he wrote in La Bella Stagione, the book he co-authored with Roberto Mancini about their Scudetto-winning 1990-91 season at Sampdoria. “It’s a sport, a game. And you play games with your friends.”
He got to play alongside a best mate, Mancini, for eight years at the Marassi, and that remains the greatest chapter in Sampdoria’s history, highlighted by the club’s one and only league title and also its lone continental success – the Cup Winners’ Cup triumph of one year before. Vialli scored both goals as they sank Anderlecht in the final in Gothenburg.
He and Mancini were I Gemelli dei Gol – the Goal Twins – inseparable on and off the pitch. They raised the Coppa Italia together three times and every now and then they raised a little hell, sneaking out of training camp at night leaving pillows under the sheets so nobody would suspect. “I was the sweet one who would break the ice [with the ladies],” recalled a self-deprecating Vialli years later. “Roberto was the handsome one.”
Those bonds of friendship helped to keep a team together longer than they otherwise might. A 22-year-old Vialli turned down Milan in the summer of 1986, reflecting that “at a big club you are, above all, a number in service to the result. Right now, I am more interested in being a person.”
The financial realities of football could not be resisted for ever, and Vialli joined Juventus in 1992, winning the Champions League and Uefa Cup, as well as a further Serie A title. Next came his move to Chelsea – a free transfer in the summer of 1996 made possible by the European court of justice’s Bosman ruling one year before.
Within 20 months, he was player-manager: promoted to replace Ruud Gullit. Vialli marked his first match in charge, a League Cup semi-final against Arsenal, by handing out glasses of champagne in the changing room before kick-off. His team won 3-1, overturning a deficit from the first leg.
So many memories to cherish forever. Thank you for sharing them with us, Luca. 💙 pic.twitter.com/fWN5moIa5q
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) January 6, 2023
It is a tale to remind us how rapidly the professional game has transformed. A top-level coach encouraging players to drink alcohol before a game sounds implausible in 2023 but then so does the idea of a club such as Chelsea hiring a player-manager in the first place.
Vialli must have been doing something right. Chelsea went on to win the League Cup, Cup Winners’ Cup and Uefa Super Cup in 1998, and the FA Cup in 2000. Going by trophy count alone, he is the club’s most successful manager of the pre-Roman Abramovich era.
His achievements as a player and coach will endure in the history books for anyone who cares to find them. Likewise, the footage of his games in video archives. He was a scorer of great goals and essential ones, overhead kicks and cup winners.
Less easy to record is his impact on the people who knew him. Vialli went to Euro 2020 as part of Mancini’s staff, serving as Italy’s head of delegation at the tournament – a ‘what you make of it’ role entailing a mix of administrative duties, ambassadorship and support to the rest of the staff.
For Italy, he felt more like a family member, there to support and offer pointers but also just to laugh and help defuse the tension that builds over a tournament. After the team bus accidentally left without him for the opening game against Turkey, it became a running gag to pretend to do it again for each subsequent game.
Vialli, like Mancini, was exorcising some demons at that tournament. They lost a European Cup final together at Wembley with Sampdoria in 1992 and on top of that had shared disappointing experiences playing for the Italian national team. At the 1990 World Cup, Vialli battled injury and was supplanted by Salvatore Schillaci, while Mancini did not play at all.
Instead of letting that history weigh on them, Vialli and Mancini set a tone for players by embodying those words from their own book – two friends sharing a game that they love.
“I’m convinced that our children follow our example more than our words,” said Vialli in an interview with Alessandro Cattelan for Netflix in Italy last year, reflecting on his relationship with his own two daughters. “I have less time to be that example, now that I know I won’t die of old age, so I try to be a positive example.
“I try to teach them that happiness depends on the perspective with which you look on life, that you shouldn’t put on airs, that you should listen more and speak less. Laugh often, help others. That’s the secret of happiness.”
