Gianluca Vialli gave Chelsea FC something higher to aspire to
Gianluca Vialli was the superstar Chelsea fans could only dream of before his arrival, and is the superstar Chelsea fans crave today. Simply, he was a magnificent man and footballer.
When even the professional football media is no escape from hot takes, rumor mongering and goldfish memories, articles like this remind us of why we’re football fans: heart and history. Why support a 118-year old club if you only bother with the last few years? At both our previous site and here at It’s a Chelsea Thing, Kevin’s ventures into club culture and history are too often elegiac. Leave a comment with some aspect of Chelsea history - a player, a game, an era, something you’ve never quite understood having only know the Roman Era - to give Kevin some ideas for future articles. - GMJP
Let’s get it right. Gianluca Vialli was not only a gifted footballer, one who loved Chelsea Football Club, but he was also an outstanding human being. There’s the unwritten rule of sports writing that, once you’ve used a person’s full name, hence forth you only use their surname. To do so now, to one of our most treasured sons, seems not only disrespectful to the relationship he formed with Blues fans starting in the summer of 1996, but would not be in keeping with the man's own ideals.
Speaking with Alessandro Cattelan for the Netflix show “One Simple Question” last year, Luca clearly knew the score. Leaving behind his wife and two daughters, he was as determined as ever to be the best he possibly could.
I’m convinced that our children follow our example more than our words. 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.
Writing this as someone just 20 days older than Luca, it’s hard not to consider your own mortality. Fifty-eight is too young to leave this life. The process of ageing is a strange one. As you grow old you become physically more aware of the constraints that nature burdens your body with, but mentally, psychologically, consciously, you don’t. It’s almost as if your body ages but your mind regresses. In my head I don’t feel 58 and I’m sure Luca didn’t. He had so much more to give.
The eulogies and tributes that have flooded in since his untimely death, following a cruel illness, speak volumes.
Gianluca was a lovely man who was a tremendous footballer. It’s difficult to not draw comparisons with another Chelsea legend, Ray Wilkins, who also left us well before he should have. The similarities between the two are striking.
Luca, like Ray (and it is Ray, not “Wilkins”), gave Chelsea everything. Ray was coach when Luca became the first Italian to manage a Premier League side, and a memorable day for Blues fans ensued on 20 May 2000. The two men who shared many memorable moments at their club stood side by side during the last FA Cup Final at the old Wembley Stadium and the first of a new Millennium. A single Roberto di Matteo goal let Chelsea lift the trophy.
Ray’s son Ross understood the relationship between the two men:
Former Liverpool manager Bill Shankley is quoted as saying “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.” He was obviously speaking tongue-in-cheek, and these Chelsea men, Luca and Ray, exemplified how much life exists far beyond the game they loved.
Luca arrived at Chelsea after winning what could have been a career’s worth of Italian and European trophies with Sampdoria and Juventus.
Anyone with a dim view of Chelsea or English football - and those views were often dim in the late 1990s, particularly when holding up our club and our game alongside Juventus and Italy - could argue he was a footballer in his twilight years looking for a place to ease into retirement. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Luca was the No. 9 Chelsea are crying out for right now. He scored 40 goals in 87 appearances.
He was something special to Chelsea: a genuine superstar who, like Ruud Gullit, who brought him to the club, lifted us to heights we could only dream of through the 80s and the beginning of the 90s. That team Luca played in was magnificent. To pick just one game that epitomised him as a player, and for sure there were many to choose from, I submit a European Cup Winners’ Cup game on a snowy night in Tromso, Norway, in October 1997.
Chelsea ultimately lost, but Luca’s two goals dancing through the snow kept us in the game. The final score was 3-2 on the night, but the Blues won the return leg 7-1, with our man grabbing a hat trick. Chelsea went on to win their first European competition since winning the same cup back in 1971. Gianfranco Zola scored the goal that sealed the deal in a 1-0 win over VfB Stuttgart.
Following Gullit’s departure, Luca took up the helm, first as player-manager before taking the touchline role on a permanent basis. He was the first Italian to manage a Premier League side. The trophies kept on coming and have continued to this day. He was at the forefront of a new Chelsea.
However, to go on about a magnificent career in football spanning 43 years quoting stats and goals and all the plaudits that those things garnered misses the point. Luca’s philosophy was about family and living his life in a good way. His lifelong friend Roberto Mancini saw Luca shortly before his death.
Gianluca gave us courage that we didn't know and which he used to fight his illness so hard that he managed to be with us as long as he possibly could.
He was the best of us, a perfect, courageous man. It was a privilege to be his friend, his team-mate in football and life.
The last word should be Luca’s. Going back to the Netflix interview, his advice for his daughters would see us all being better people:
You shouldn’t put on airs. You should listen more and speak less. Laugh often, help others. That’s the secret of happiness.
Chelsea fans will always love you, Luca. Rest in Peace.
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