Football and the world of sport are still in mourning. A few weeks after the disappearance of Sinisa Mihajlovic, who succumbed to an aggressive form of leukemia last December 16, and the death on December 29 of Pelé, or Rei, aged 82, died today in a London clinic Gianluca Vialli, ex forward for Cremonese, Sampdoria, Juventus and Chelsea. He was 58 years old and had been battling pancreatic cancer for five years.
Gianluca Vialli is dead, the family: “His example is forever in our hearts”. The football world mourns him
Vialli, who between 1985 and 1992 made a total of 59 appearances and scored 16 goals for the national team, taking part in two World Cups (Mexico 1986 and Italy 1990) and a European one (West Germany 1988), recently announced his absence to the FIGC as head of the Italy delegation (assigned in November 2019 in place of Gigi Riva) in view of the 2023 matches valid for the 2024 European Championship qualifiers.
Between Samp, Juve, Chelsea and the Wembley final: Gianluca Vialli, a role model for everyone
Stephen Chess
Like Mihajlovic, in fact, Vialli has always faced his illness openly: “At the end of a long and difficult ‘negotiation’ with my wonderful team of oncologists – he had declared – I decided to suspend, hopefully temporarily, my present and future professional commitments. The goal is to use all my psycho-physical energies to help my body overcome this phase of the disease, in order to be able to face new adventures as soon as possible and share them with all of you. A hug”.
Vialli’s death and Cabrini’s words: “Joyful and sincere, he knew how to give the right weight to things”
francesco manassero
With Alessandro Cattelan who had interviewed him last March, Vialli had let himself go to some confessions: «I am afraid of dying. I don’t know when the light goes out what’s on the other side. But I’m also kind of excited to find out. I also realize that the concept of death serves to understand and appreciate life.”
Here, that embrace mixed with tears with his lifelong friend and field mate in the Sampdoria shirt, coach Roberto Mancini, to seal the success of the national team at the last European Championships, was one of those moments of moving intensity , which is really worth living for.
Trusted friends, the restaurant in Corso Moncalieri with table football and Oscar Wilde’s books: this is Vialli’s Turin
piero white
The illness
He called him “the unwanted guest”, not an enemy to fight against but a traveling companion that no one would like to have and that he hoped they would get tired of him. So she didn’t go, unfortunately.
When in 2017 Gianluca Vialli discovered he had pancreatic cancer, notoriously among the most aggressive, he understandably experienced a shock, as he confessed in his book “Goals”: «My eyes are yellow. And the doctor says to me: ‘Stop, Gianluca’. I look at him doubtfully. Why do I have to stop? My life is a constant movement between London, Milan, the BBC, Sky, my family, my colleagues, the golf courses, my friends. What do I have to stop? The magnetic resonance gives me the answer: stop everything, Luca».
When Vialli said: “I have two goals: not to die before my parents and to bring my daughters to the altar”
Vialli talks about it with his wife, the former model Cathryne White Cooper, tells his daughters Olivia and Sofia, faces an operation and the first two cycles of chemotherapy.
He soon decides to talk about it publicly: «You would never want to make the people who love you suffer. And it feels like a sense of shame, as if what happened to you was your fault. I went around with a sweater under my shirt, so that the others wouldn’t notice anything, to still be the Vialli they knew».
Arm mourning and a minute’s silence: Juve remembers Vialli, the captain of the last Champions League
Gianluca Oddenino
Vialli’s strength and courage in declaring his state are an example. His is not a fight to kill cancer, but a challenge to change himself: “Life is made up of 10 percent of what happens to us, and 90 percent of how we deal with it – says Vialli in a ‘interview with Corriere della Sera – I hope my story can help others to face what is happening in the right way».
Pancreatic cancer, the disease that struck Gianluca Vialli
GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Vialli, already beloved by fans for his sporting past, becomes a universal symbol. For many years Gianluca, together with his friend Massimo Mauro, has been supporting scientific research against ALS, the degenerative disease that has affected more than one footballer.
Vialli calls Fedez when the singer discovers that he needs to be operated on due to the same disease as the former footballer. The rapper thanks him publicly on his very popular social media: “Until a few days ago we didn’t even know each other, then a phone call a few days before the surgery that I will hardly forget”.
Gianluca Vialli in sixteen sentences: from the courage to kick to the fear of dying
In the Netflix series “A simple question”, with Alessandro Cattelan, in an interview on the golf course – another of his passions – Vialli still speaks deeply about the disease: “I hope to live as long as possible, but I feel much more fragile than before and every behavior leads me to make this reasoning, that is: ‘Is this the right thing that I am showing my daughters?’. In this sense, I try to be a positive example, I try to teach them that happiness depends on the perspective through which you look at life. I try to explain to them that you don’t have to put on airs, you have to listen more and talk less, improve yourself every day, you have to laugh often and help others. In my opinion, this is a bit the secret of happiness».
A wisdom that will be missed.
Arm mourning and a minute’s silence: Juve remembers Vialli, the captain of the last Champions League
Gianluca Oddenino
Taken from IlSecoloXIX.it