Italian football came together again this week in the name of Gianluca Vialli.
The Premio Gianluca Vialli brought together figures from across the game to honour a player whose career connected some of the defining chapters of modern Italian football. Roberto Mancini was among those in attendance, three years after the loss of the teammate and close friend with whom he shared two very different eras of his career.
At Sampdoria, Vialli and Mancini were the faces of a team that changed the club’s history. Vialli scored 19 league goals as Sampdoria won their first and only Scudetto in 1990/91, while the pair also helped the club win the Cup Winners’ Cup and reach the 1992 European Cup final.
Vialli later joined Juventus and captained the club to the Champions League in 1996, lifting the trophy in Rome after victory over Ajax. For Italy, he earned 59 senior caps, scored 16 goals and represented the Azzurri at the 1986 and 1990 World Cups.
More than two decades after their Sampdoria years, Vialli and Mancini found themselves together again with Italy. Vialli joined the national-team staff in 2019 and was part of the side that won EURO 2020 at Wembley. Their embrace after the final became one of the lasting images of Italy’s victory, bringing together a friendship that had begun as young teammates in Genoa.
Vialli died in January 2023 at the age of 58. The award carrying his name now brings Italian football together each year around a career that stretched from Sampdoria’s greatest team to a European title with Juventus and, eventually, another with Italy.
Few figures have occupied so many important chapters of Italian football and remained so closely connected to the people who shared them.
