A gentleman to the end

I can’t remember the exact date, but it was in the early summer of 1996 that I was passing through the 8th floor of the Philips offices in Croydon when I heard, from within a desk cubicle, “Fuck me! They’ve signed Vialli!”. A marketing manager and fellow Chelsea fan had just received a text message telling him that Gianluca Vialli - who had, just days before, been the Champions League-winning captain of Juventus - had signed for Chelsea on a free transfer. 

It’s hard to describe, even now, how Earth shattering this news was. Even in 1996, with Manchester United in the middle of their imperious domination of English football, it was unusual for a proper European superstar to join a Premier League club, let alone a player who had just won the European Cup as captain of ‘The Old Lady’ of Turin. And now he was joining an apparently underwhelming club that hadn’t won a major trophy in 26 years. 

Vialli’s arrival at Chelsea can be seen as significant in the transformation of English football. It is inseparable from the rise of the Premier League as the world’s most lucrative football competition, attracting stellar talent and broadcasters willing to pay top dollar to watch them. A month or so before Vialli joined the club it had appointed Ruud Gullit as, initially, player-manager. The Dutchman was, himself, a glamorous, ‘sexy’ European idol whose own move to Chelsea - even long after his playing usefulness had evaporated - brought stardust to West London.

Vialli was Gullit’s first, and unlikely, signing. But even with the striker being presented to the press holding a Chelsea shirt, it was hard at first for fans to grasp the concept of such a European football giant in their midst. Gullit, who’d won three Serie A titles and two European Cups with AC Milan, had been brought to Chelsea by Glenn Hoddle the year before, at the start of the club’s change in fortunes. It still took some getting used to the idea of a Ballon d’Or and a two-time World Soccer Player Of The Year winner on the club’s books. The acquisition of ‘name’ players like Mark Hughes suggested that Chelsea were emerging from near calamitous times in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the club yo-yo’d between the old First and Second Divisions, and even flirted with financial collapse. Its relative resurgence was being part-propelled by millionaire Matthew Harding who became a director in 1993. With Gullit replacing Hoddle, his Filofax of international connections soon brought in Vialli, followed by fellow Italians Gianfranco Zola and Roberto Di Matteo. Suddenly, Chelsea Football Club looked glamorous again, even if they hadn’t actually won anything.

Italian football was very much in vogue in 1996. Italia 90 had made us all fall in love with the country and its footballing culture, aided also by Channel 4’s Football Italia in 1992, presented by James Richardson. By 1996, those who knew their football, knew Gianluca Vialli. Those who knew their Serie A, knew what Vialli’s arrival at Chelsea meant. My Philips colleague’s expletive exclamation was entirely justified. This was on a par with, say George Clooney joining the cast of EastEnders.

Having just turned 32 when he signed for Chelsea, there were the inevitable sniffy comments from rival supporters that the apparently nouveau riche Chelsea had acquired Vialli on a free because he’d exceeded his usefulness in Italy. Not so. In his time as a player at the club, he went on to score 40 goals in 88 appearances. Two of those goals came in his first season: in January 1997 Chelsea faced Liverpool at home in the FA Cup fourth round. 2-0 down at half time, Hughes and Zola clawed back a goal each early in the second half, even with Chelsea having lost defender Scott Minto to a red card. Chelsea’s comeback was completed by goals from Vialli in the 63rd and 76th minutes. His legendary status at the club was secured within his first few months as a player. Chelsea would go on to win the FA Cup that season, with Di Matteo scoring his famous goal against Middleborough after just 42 seconds of play at Wembley. I was there, and just as Vialli’s arrival had been somewhat other-worldly, to see the club I’d supported since childhood winning one of the greatest trophies in sport, for the only time in my conscious lifetime, was another moment to bewilder. 

When Gullit was sacked in February 1998, Vialli followed the Dutchman’s earlier transition from player to player-manager and took over. His first game in charge was a League Cup semi-final against Arsenal, before which he gave each of his players a glass of champagne in the changing room. Chelsea went on to win 3-1, reversing Arsenal’s lead from the first leg. It’s a small piece of the Vialli legend, but a compelling snapshot of just why his death, announced yesterday, has brought a palpable pall over football, and the Chelsea community.

People talk lovingly about footballing greats when they die, but I’ve never heard of a player as loved or as revered as Vialli. I once let him pass me on the stairs leading down from the East Stand commentary box at Stamford Bridge and felt a genuine presence, even if he was wrapped up in an ostentatiously Italian scarf, coat and hat combination. I’m not easily starstruck (I’ve met plenty of musicians and actors in my career), but to even stand in the same space as Vialli was a ‘moment’, simply because of what he represented in his relatively brief time at Chelsea. 

While the sort of success that came in the Abramovich era was still somewhat beyond the club’s reach when Vialli was in charge, he still took them to the quarter-finals of their first ever Champions League run (which included a 3-1 victory over Barcelona) and another FA Cup trophy in 2000, beating Aston Villa. In total, he won five trophies with the club in less than three years, including the European Cup Winners’ Cup, making Vialli - at 33 - the youngest manager to win a major European trophy. The silverware alone, in my mind, qualifies  him still as one of the greatest figures to have ever played or worked for Chelsea.

In its obituary the club itself wrote: “As soon as he walked through the door at Stamford Bridge, when already a global football star, Luca declared his wish to become a Chelsea legend. It is a target he undoubtedly reached, revered for his work on the pitch and in the dugout during some of the most successful years in our history. Loved by fans, players and staff at Stamford Bridge, Luca will be sorely missed not just by the Chelsea community, but the entire footballing world, including in his native Italy, where he was such an iconic figure.”

These are the words you invariably read when a much loved figure in football passes on. But for me, at least, laden with poignancy. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine someone in the game to endear himself so profoundly to fans and those he worked with. Everyone seems to note how charming he was, funny and, despite his prodigious achievements in the game, even long before he came to SW6, lacking the rampaging ego so many big names in the sport seem to possess today. His likeability, amongst the Chelsea fanbase, was enhanced by his wholesale embrace of London and the sense of Italian style he brought to it. For years I’ve worn black V-neck sweaters purely because Vialli did.

Nothing at Chelsea lasts forever, and after indifferent performances early in the 2000-2001 season, leading to a strained relationship between Vialli and his players, the club sacked him. The consensus was that Chelsea had, with Gullit and then Vialli, tried and failed with two legends of the game as young player-managers. That said, the approach had still managed to net silverware that had proven elusive since the 1970s. Perhaps, too, in appointing Claudio Ranieri, the club had learned that a foreign perspective and a little Italian charm went a long way.

News that Vialli had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer first emerged in November 2018, but after 18 months of chemotherapy - and out of the spotlight - he was given the all-clear. Still, though, the Italian remained typically modest, telling a TV interviewer in his home country, with remarkable honesty: “I cannot fight with cancer because I would not be able to win this battle, it is a much stronger opponent than me. Cancer is an unwanted travel companion, but I can't help it.” Defiantly, though, he kept going. “I have to go ahead and travel with my head down, never giving up, hoping that one day this unwanted guest will get tired and leave peacefully for many years because there are still so many things I want to do in this life.” 

In 2019 Vialli joined his former Sampdoria strike partner Roberto Mancini in the Italian national set up. But at the end of last year the cancer returned, and he stepped down from his role with the Azzurri. Presciently, in March last year, he’d told a Netflix documentary: “I know that I probably will not die of old age, I hope to live as long as possible, but I feel much more fragile than before.”

Picture: Getty Images

Vialli handled his cancer journey with humility, even devoting a book to it - Goals: Inspirational Stories To Help Tackle Life’s Challenges, a compendium of stories examining the human spirit. Reading it again now, it reflects both his courage and his sense of humour. “Illness can teach a lot about who you are, and can push you to go beyond the superficial way in which we live,” he said at one point.

“I can‘t tell you how good a guy he was,” a visibly moved Graeme Souness told Sky Sports yesterday morning, minutes after the news of Vialli’s death had been announced. Like Mancini, the Scot had played with Vialli at Sampdoria. “Forget football for a minute, he was just a gorgeous soul. He was a truly nice human being,” Souness added. “I went to Italy when I was 31-years-old. He was 20 and he was just fabulous to be around. Such a fun loving guy, he was full of mischief. He was such a warm individual and a fabulous player.“

“I think it’s so typical of him that he kept [his cancer] very private, very personal and he took it on as I’d expect him to take it on,” Souness said. “It was his fight, wanted to deal with it himself, didn't want to burden other people with it.”

Like so many successful sportsmen and women, Luca Vialli was a serial winner. The sight of him celebrating Italy’s success over England in the Euro 2020 final at Wembley brought no pleasure to me as an English supporter, but still brought a smile to my face - a footballing hero revelling in victory. Of course, it’s a sight you see with any sporting endeavour reaching a conclusive outcome, but somehow, the fact that it was Vialli made it more enjoyable. Satisfying, even.

Apart from that fleeting encounter on the staircase at Stamford Bridge, I never met Gianluca Vialli. Why would I have done? When he came to Chelsea he was a near-mythical football God. In real terms he may not have spent all that long at the club, but his death has affected me more than I expected. He didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him, but I feel compelled to make the same statement as did Carlo Ancelotti, Vialli’s former Sampdoria teammate and another effortlessly cool Italian who held the title ‘Chelsea manager’: “Ciao amico mio”.

Gianluca Vialli - 1964-2023

The day football came back...briefly

I don’t know about you, but I’m passing the extended lockdown by noting anniversaries of the otherwise mundane: the last time I had a coffee at Caffé Nero, the last time I went swimming, the last time I saw someone in the flesh who wasn’t a member of my immediate household. That sort of thing. For example, Easter Sunday marked an exact month since my last haircut, and given my barnet’s normal growth rate, I’m surprised I'm not yet resembling Tom Hanks in Castaway.

It is now six weeks - SIX - since I last saw a football being kicked in anger, (Chelsea's 4-0 battering of Everton, since you ask, easily the best game I've seen this season). In other circumstances this might have bothered me, but like so many aspects of the viral crisis, there are other things that now take priority and, frankly, football is not one of them. Not that football isn’t perfectly capable of crowbarring itself back into consciousness, whether it is the idiot Kyle Walker getting caught in flagrante with a couple of “sex workers” who clearly weren’t members of his household, or his former club Tottenham Hotspur digging itself into a hole by placing half of its 550 non-playing staff under the government’s furlough scheme and imposing 20% pay cuts on other employees (despite being the world’s eighth-richest football club which recently posted record annual revenues of £461 million and a profit of around £70 million). Facing a backlash from its own fans and even some players, Spurs have wisely made a U-turn, with Daniel Levy, the club’s chairman (who earned a cool £7 million last year) announcing that all non-playing staff will now get paid in full for April and May, with only the board taking a pay cut. Last week Liverpool staged a similar volte face. In truth, clubs like Tottenham and Liverpool - 8th and 7th, respectively, for global club revenues last season - can most afford it. Others, like Bournemouth and Norwich City probably can’t and have carried on with drawing on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

We are on shaky moral ground, here. Elite football generates - and spends - ridiculous amounts of money, money it earns, if it is a Premier League or Championship team, from they eye-watering deals done with television companies. Matchday gate receipts and income from merchandise and sales of dodgy burgers is, for some clubs at this level, something of a bonus. For clubs lower down, however, every last bottle of Coke sold could be the difference between a bleak future or not when this thing is all over. Here, like so many businesses across the spectrum of enterprise, there are people working at these football clubs who earn a mere fraction of the sums trawled by the players they serve. That said, Spurs should never have put themselves in the spotlight with such a PR disaster.

In a club statement Levy said: "The criticism the Club has received over the last week has been felt all the more keenly because of our track record of good works and our huge sense of responsibility to care for those that rely on us, particularly locally. It was never our intent, as custodians, to do anything other than put measures in place to protect jobs whilst the Club sought to continue to operate in a self-sufficient manner during uncertain times.” Be that as it may, but when the businesses of the very fans who keep these clubs going are facing very uncertain futures, Spurs' unnecessary insertion in the coronavirus news cycle was ill-thought through especially, without little fanfare, while other clubs have simply been getting on with it (Leeds United’s first-team squad have agreed wage cuts to assist others at the club, Juventus players have taken a four-month pay cut and Barcelona players have agreed to a 70% pay cut).

Picture: Nike

Were it not for this brouhaha, football would have dropped completely from view. I am, though, inclined to care less about whether the current season ends, or whether Liverpool’s somewhat justifiable receipt of the Premier League title, happens or not. "Staying in, saving lives" has replaced everything else in my consciousness. Last Monday I started a new job, which at least managed to supplant days framed largely by an unhealthy diet of rolling news and watching delivery vans out of the living room window speed up and down the road. Covid-19 has rapidly reshaped our priorities and interests, not that football was exactly an obsession. But I've now realised how much of my time was, pre-crisis, spent on watching, reading, WhatsApping, tweeting and blogging about football. And then, nothing. Like I'd reached the end of the universe and discovered that beyond it, there is nowt. Well, there was, until Easter Sunday when, in much the same manner as EastEnders' Nasty Nick appearing out of the blue to say "'Ello Ma, fancy a cuppa?", the football void was momentarily broken by a bittersweet memory. On Sunday afternoon the BBC cast our minds back to something which, despite coming 30 years ago, still fills football fans with tear-inducing nostalgia: Italia ’90.

The 1990 FIFA World Cup, to give it its full name was, for England fans at least, a moment of mass cultural change. Football was still in the doghouse after the 1985 Heysel disaster and, just a year before, the Hillsborough tragedy in Sheffield. The game didn’t exactly disappear, but it certainly wasn’t where it is now - or at least was before that nasty little virus arrived on these shores. Italia ’90 was a football tournament, obviously, but it managed to transcend that in England, largely thanks to the BBC’s coverage of it. Fronted by the smoother-than-silk Des Lynam (“Desmond”, as commentator John Motson consistently referred to him), the Beeb bought into the dreamy Italian vibe with Luciano Pavarotti’s rendition of Nessun Dorma from Puccini's opera Turandot as its theme tune. “You’ll be humming it soon – you’ll know the words to it by July 8”, Lynam quipped on the opening day, setting an incongruously cultured tone to coverage of a tournament normally less sophisticated. I’m not going to recall the whole thing here - Roger Milla corner flag dance and Totò Schillaci’s eye-bulging reaction to scoring a winner notwithstanding - rather than reminisce over last Sunday’s unexpected flashback: West Germany-v-England.

By 1990 England had been bereft of international footballing success for a full 24 years (“30 years of hurt” would prevail beyond Euro ’96), so England reaching a semi-final against Frans Beckenbauer’s pre-unification West Germany was a big deal. Before the tournament had begun the usual negativity surrounding England had been added to by news that manager Bobby Robson would leave after the competition to join PSV Eindhoven. Then came England’s opening game, a dismal 1-1 draw against Ireland. For the next match, against the Dutch, Robson changed the system around, allowing the-then 23-year-old Paul Gascoigne’s talents fully into the fray. England would win their group, raising prospects - “could this be the year, finally?”. Gazza became a joy to behold and easily England’s breakout tournament start. His supply to David Platt in the last-16 tie against Belgium, enabling the striker to volley spectacularly into the goal with seconds to spare in extra time, marked the youngster as the one to watch. Next came Cameroon in a quarter-final, from which England progressed, just. By this time of the World Cup, Italia ’90 fever had reached its peak. As Des had predicted, Nessun Dorma had become the soundtrack of the summer (along with New Order's World In Motion). Coupled with England’s run, with a team comprised of players in their prime, like Gary Lineker, John Barnes, Des Walker and even Peter Shilton, who seemed old in 1990 (he retired soonafter) but looked absolutely rock-solid between the sticks, we were lured by the charms of the Italian peninsular, its islands and its football culture. Channel 4's Football Italia would come not long after (and could be a whole separate blog post, as I waxed on about James Richardson laconic Saturday morning magazine show).

In that Italian excursion in the summer of 1990 there was one last challenge: that semi-final, on Wednesday, 4 July at the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin. The last group of Englishmen to get out of the northern Italian city with their dignity intact was probably Charlie Croker’s men in The Italian Job, but here was Bobby Robson’s team, on the back of lucky but scintillating results, facing the mighty Kaiser, Franz Beckenbauer, and his imperious collection of blond, mullet-haired grafters. I could go on lengthily about that game, except that I won’t. If you missed Sunday’s streamed broadcast then I hope the BBC will dig it out again sometime, and you’ll be able to relive what felt like the first truly romantic football experience of my life. It had highs and lows, and some of the best England football I’d seen at that stage, Gazza in particular proving to be so inventive through the middle, until his rashness showed through and ‘Gazza’s Tears’ became as much an icon of Italia ’90 as Pavarotti’s aria. And the lows? England hitting the inside of the German upright in normal time and then again in the extended period after Lineker’s 80th minute strike had kept them in the game, only for the penalty shootout to end in disappointment for Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle (though lucrative commercials for Pizza Hut must have alleviated the pain for the England left back).

Sunday’s airing of the 1990 semi-final brought back the memory that, in some small way, football had been excused, especially in England. It was OK to talk about the sport again amongst friends and colleagues. England hadn’t just come close to their first final in a generation - indeed, closest to winning the World Cup on foreign soil than any England side before or since - they also played with an aplomb the national side’s critics had hitherto been bating them for. Some might argue that the euphoria of England hosting the Euros six years later - and suffering a similar fate to the Germans… - beats the Italian World Cup in 1990. I just see it as a turning point in football’s reputation, when the classical surroundings of stunning Italian cities, some broadly decent games sprinkled with era-defining moments, did much to restore football. You could even say that Italia ’90 recovered the sport from the neanderthal ugliness that had periodically impaired its profile in the '70s and '80s. It was fun to be transported back 30 years to that July evening. Strangely, it didn’t make me hanker for football to return yet in 2020. Football will come back, like everything else - going to the pub, shopping for clothes, going to the gym - when it’s the right time. Yes, some clubs will suffer. Many will even go out of business, like so many other commercial activities. But it will come back.