A warrior and gentleman, an icon and friend. Gianluca Vialli lived football - and life - the right way.
Every football fan who casts an eye back to the good old days of Serie A looks back to a time we’ve all collectively romanticised. The football was slower, yes, but the quality was undeniable. The shirts, the stadiums, the characters — all part of a golden age. And yet perhaps no story from that time carries more romance than Sampdoria’s 1990/91 title win. No player played a greater role in it than Gianluca Vialli.
That season remains like a dream. Sampdoria, the outsiders, staring down the giants of Milan, Turin, and Rome. They had no right to challenge, no history of domination, but with Vialli leading the line they made the impossible real. Alongside Roberto Mancini, his brother in arms, he formed one half of I Gemelli del Gol - the Goal Twins. Together they were devastating. Their partnership was more than just football: it was loyalty, laughter, and friendship. You could see it in the sly grins exchanged after a clever flick, in the way they celebrated like boys who’d known each other since the playground.
Vialli scored 19 goals that season, carrying Samp to the Scudetto. He finished as Serie A’s top scorer and was named Player of the Season. Sampdoria’s one and only league title was not just an underdog story - it was a fairytale, written with Vialli’s boots. Even the disappointment of the following year’s European Cup final, where chances went begging against Barcelona at Wembley, could not tarnish what he had already created. He had placed Sampdoria among Europe’s elite.
Success like that does not go unnoticed. Football’s greatest names have always commanded record-breaking transfer fees: Maradona, Cruyff, Zidane, Ronaldo (the proper one from Brazil), and even the other Ronaldo (the wally from Portugal). Vialli deserves his place among them. When Juventus paid £12.5 million in 1992 - a world record at the time - it confirmed his status as one of the finest forwards of his generation.
In Turin, it was not always simple. Injuries and inconsistency played their part, but when Juventus needed him most he delivered. In 1996 he captained them to Champions League glory, finally claiming the trophy he had long craved. His brace in the semi-final against Nantes paved the way to Rome, where he lifted the European Cup high, vindication at last.
Then came London. Chelsea signed him in 1996, first as a striker and later as player-manager - one of the last of his kind. He brought an Italian flair to Stamford Bridge that had been absent. With Vialli, Chelsea became ambitious, stylish, and successful. The FA Cup, the League Cup, and a European trophy followed. His managerial reign was not without turbulence - his ruthlessness in certain decisions led, incredibly given his warm personality, to him losing the dressing room. But his imprint on Chelsea endured, laying the groundwork for the club’s future rise.
For Italy, his story was bittersweet. Twice he went to the World Cup, in 1986 and again on home soil in 1990, wearing the famous number 9 shirt. Yet the glittering international triumph he desired never arrived. Fate, however, offered a different kind of redemption. Decades later, at Euro 2020, he stood beside Mancini once more, this time not on the pitch but on the bench. Their embrace after the final at Wembley was more than celebration - it was a lifetime of friendship and shared history distilled into one moment. A photograph that captured not just a victory, but a bond.
And yet, even beyond the football, Gianluca Vialli was something greater. He carried himself with dignity, humour, and humanity. In later years, as he battled illness, he displayed the same elegance and bravery that defined him as a player. He spoke not of fear, but of gratitude. He reminded us all that greatness is not measured only in medals or goals, but in how you live, how you carry yourself, and how you make others feel.
Vialli left us with memories of goals that shook stadiums, trophies that gleamed under floodlights, friendships that endured for decades, and an example of how to live with grace. He was both warrior and gentleman, icon and friend.
Gianluca Vialli. One of one.
