Gianluca Vialli, the generous Italian who “enjoyed” the defeat against Barcelona

Barcelona – Gianluca Vialli, who passed away on January 6, 2023, was a huge footballer, an excellent coach…and a sports person out of the ordinary.

In May 2017, a year before revealing he had cancer, he gave an interview to a TV show, ‘The Robinson Report’, in which he recalled the 1992 European Cup final, the first that Barcelona won, defeating his team Sampdoria, and far from it. No regrets, he dared, something unheard of, to accept that defeat.

Barcelona have been an ogre in Vialli’s sporting career, however, over the years, far from any displeasure with FC Barcelona, ​​they have earned him great respect.

“Without this victory (the 1992 victory) Barcelona would not be what it is today and I am convinced that it would have been better for Barcelona to have won than for Sampdoria. Barcelona should have won the European Cup and for the sake of football it is fair that he revealed in that report, with a generosity practically impossible. Find it in others.

It was a historic final because it was the last in the old European Cup, and it meant the return of the English club (Arsenal) after five years of punishment due to the Heysel tragedy and was the first (and until today only) played by a team. A second-class club in Italy has been standing up to the Serie A giants for several years now.

Cannes, Samp Vialli and Mancini (twin goal), from Pagliuca, Toninho Cerezo, Vershovod, Lombardo… The team, led by Vojdin Boskov, is able to rub shoulders with the greats. The win put Genoa City on the football map…

There is an image that is forever stored in the retinas of Barcelona fans. Vialli, who was sitting on the bench having already been substituted in the 1992 Wembley final, covered his face with a blue towel when German referee Aaron Schmidhuber pointed out in extra time the foul on Eusébio who in the 111th minute caused a foul. eternal goal Ronald Koeman.

That bad omen, that moment, the Italian striker evoked the Cup Winners’ Cup final three years ago, in 1989, he had lost in Bern to Barcelona himself, but with the passage of time he did not transfer to his memories in a tragic or frustrating way.

If Barcelona’s triumph in 1989 was not in dispute, the 1992 final was by no means a picnic for the Blaugrana. And Vialli, the same man who was so generous to the Dream Team many years later, missed as many as three goals against Zubizarreta that could have changed history. No one around the Camp Nou could have any doubts what would have happened if they had lost.

Vialli had no resentment. He never pointed out the discussed error that caused his team’s defeat, nor did he settle for fatalism. His personal greatness has always gone above and beyond.

The protagonist of the all-time best Sampdoria, where they won the only scudetto in their history in 1991 as well as three cup titles, the Italian Super Cup and the 1990 Cup Winners’ Cup (beating Anderlecht in the final by two goals), football could not be unfair to Vialli, who He completed three continental titles with Juventus, winning the UEFA Cup in 1993 and the UEFA Champions League in 1996, and concluded his international career with the UEFA Super Cup in 1998 (in his dual role as player-coach at Chelsea already) beating Real Madrid in Monaco.

Two days after losing at Wembley, Juventus made his transfer official for €17 million, making it the record transfer in world football at the time, and in 1996, upset because La Vecchia Signora offered to renew for only one season, not two. Intended when he was 32, he went to Chelsea while the Champions League win two days earlier over Ajax Amsterdam was still standing.

His departure from Juventus could have caused controversy, especially being the team’s leader and unquestioned for Lippi, but he said goodbye with honor and kind words, Ruud Gullit claimed that he would play under him at Chelsea, of which he would become coach two years later. ..

In the pre-Abramovic era he became a Stamford Bridge star either as a player (40 goals in 88 games) or coach (76 wins in 143 games) to win as many as eight titles (the Premier League resisted him). Barcelona clashed again at their peak: the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League in the 1999-2000 season.

From 3-1 going into extra time in the round of madness played at the Camp Nou and ruled (5-1) after a controversial penalty on Figo sank Chelsea. “It’s not a nightmare, it was a great game and despite my disappointment, Barcelona played better,” he said farewell in the press room, once again showing the great sportsmanship that accompanied him throughout his career.

And that he didn’t give up even as the cancer advanced, he was able to celebrate Euro 2021 in tears as head of the Italian team’s delegation (along with his friend Mancini) before resigning in December 2022 to “use all my energies to help my body overcome this stage of the disease”. He couldn’t…but the legend of a dignified, erect athlete who lost like few of them will live on.