Sampdoria Long For Another Gianluca Vialli As They Visit Their Hero’s Home City

Serie B’s biggest side are enduring a nightmare of a season. 

Sampdoria are already on their third manager of the campaign and are coming off the back of a 4-1 defeat to Roma in the Coppa Italia. Moreover, they’re hovering dangerously over the relegation zone in the league with just four wins all season.

Leonardo Semplici will attempt to get things back on track this weekend with a trip to Cremona.

High-flying Cremonese await at the Stadio Giovanni Zini on Sunday in a game that could well be billed as the Gianluca Vialli derby.

One of the Italian game’s most-beloved figures, Vialli was a son of the city, born in July 1964. He came through the Cremonese youth system and played for the first team for four years before getting snapped up by Sampdoria in the summer of 1984 after scoring 23 goals in Serie B across three seasons.

Vialli was a striker who could do it all, a No 9 who possessed the touch and grace of a No 10. Reflecting on his development as a player in his youth in his book The Italian Job, Vialli believes his family’s wealth helped influence his game.

Much of his childhood was spent living in Villa Affaitati in the tiny, but affluent, town of Grumello Cremonese. While other players spent their formative years playing football in streets and dusty, rubbish-strewn areas of land, Vialli played in a courtyard. 

Yet this home set-up that would turn him into a better player. “My courtyard was a rectangle with garages on opposite sides and open ends, the sides were longer than the ends, but the garages served as convenient goals, so we played on a pitch that was wider than it was long,” wrote Vialli.

“I was always a striker, of course, but because the pitch was so wide, I found myself covering the whole width of the front line.”

Vialli’s family spent the summer months in their countryside retreat, which meant he could play on grass and try things he couldn’t back in the concrete-filled yard of the Villa.

“My brother and I would spend hours practising overhead kicks, flying backheels and improbable headers,” he said. “The ground was so soft that you wouldn’t get hurt even if you landed on your head.”

It’s no surprise that Vialli would be known for scoring headers and overhead kicks later in his career.

For all the success at Juventus and his cult status at Chelsea, it’s Sampdoria that he’s most associated with.

In eight, glorious years at the club Vialli nearly won every trophy there was to win in the game. A Scudetto, three Coppa Italias, one SuperCoppa Italiana and the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup – in addition to losing a European Cup final – represented the best period in Samp’s history. 

Vialli formed a brilliant partnership with Roberto Mancini. Mancini had arrived at the club two years prior and the pair would go on to be labelled ‘the goal twins’, as they scored 294 goals between them in all competitions throughout the rest of the decade and into the early ’90s. 

Vialli arguably reached his peak in the 1990-91 campaign. He scored the decisive goal in the legendary May 5 clash against Inter at San Siro that remains one of the greatest games in Serie A history. Then aged 26, he won the Capocannoniere title that season to boot, with 19 goals seeing him finish three clear of Lothar Matthaus.

Vialli’s relationship with Samp owner Paolo Mantovani was special, and almost unheard of — even in the 1980s before finances became the overwhelming force in the game. While Napoli owner Corrado Ferlaino would hold Diego Maradona prisoner in Naples, supercharging his addiction to cocaine, Mantovani would conduct contract meetings with Vialli on a personal level each summer, providing one of his two-star players advice from a personal and business perspective.

Instead of offering Vialli a pre-set four or five-year contract with a specific salary, Mantovani would give his talismanic striker a blank cheque every summer, in which they’d agree on a number dependant on how he performed the season prior. 

In The Italian Job, Vialli yearned for that way of doing business but recognised it would never happen again. “I miss Mantovani’s paternalistic way of doing things,” he wrote. 

“You felt as if he was really looking out for you and never had the need to question him. But I know how few of his kind there are in football and how young players have been misled and exploited, so agents are necessary.”

When Vialli felt the time was finally right to leave Sampdoria in the summer of 1992 and in talks with Juventus, he asked Mantovani to negotiate his contract with Juve on his behalf. 

Two-and-a-half-years later in February 1995, Vialli scored one of his best goals for Juve against Samp at the Marassi. Picking the ball up from deep, he brushed past Pietro Vierchowod, and soared past two more defenders before smashing the ball past Walter Zenga from a tight angle. 

He had every reason to celebrate, considering the quality of the goal and what it meant to Juve in the title race. But Vialli refused. He had too much respect for the club that treated him like a son.

How the modern iteration of the Blucerchiati could do with someone of Vialli’s quality now. Forty years on since he departed the Giovanni Zini for the Luigi Ferraris, Sampdoria need a win against Cremonese on Sunday, which would take them clear of the relegation zone and into the top half of the table.

But who’s going to stand up for Samp in their time of need?

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