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The coach in Vialli’s clinic: “He was very weak but he alternated moments of great lucidity with rest. The national team was always in his thoughts: he asked me how the internship had gone”
The last hug was on December 29th. In London, like a year and a half earlier, on July 11, 2021. Without the scent of Wembley lawn grass, but with the unmistakable smell of a clinic. A silence where it was enough to whisper, to talk to each other. But in the end Vialli and Mancini had done it that evening too: there were so few things to say in the ear that it was enough to say it in a low voice.