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Extended Clip - R.I.P Gigi Riva: Italy & Cagliari’s Greatest Ever Striker
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After the sad news of the passing of Serie A legend Gigi Riva, Nima Tavallaey and Carlo Garganese pay tribute to Italy and Cagliari's greatest ever striker.
This is a clip from the weekly Thursday episode of the Italian Football Podcast.
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Transcript
Gigi Riva: A Football Legend's Farewell
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Italian football podcast. So very very sad news to start with and Gigi Riva passed away this week at the age of of 79 and one of the all-time greats of Italian football and of the Italy national team and he's a legend a legend for for not just the Azuri but for
00:00:27
Speaker
For Callery, more than 30,000 people turned up for his funeral, which goes to show just how iconic and just how loved Gigi Riva was. So what we're going to do is we're going to just do a little commemoration of him, talk a little bit about him. Some of our younger listeners maybe don't know so much about Gigi Riva.
The Rise of Riva: From Debut to Serie A Glory
00:00:51
Speaker
We'll start off with what he did and what he means for Callery. He made his debut for Callery
00:00:57
Speaker
in 1963 and he spent the rest of his career at Calgary and he became an adopted
00:01:10
Speaker
Sardinian. He was an absolute hero to the people on that island and he helped Kaliri win promotion to Selya in his first season and then led them to the Selya title to the Scudetto in 1969-1970 season, the only Scudetto in
00:01:32
Speaker
in Callery's history and he was an attacker and an absolute gold machine for Callery.
00:01:44
Speaker
He is the top scorer in the history of Calgary with 208 goals in just 378 appearances.
Loyalty to Cagliari: Turning Down the Giants
00:01:52
Speaker
He
00:01:53
Speaker
And he was incredibly loyal. He really was a bandiera. He rejected moves to all three of the big Northern clubs, Juventus, Milan, and Inter turned down huge sums of money in order to stay with Calgary. And just a legend for Calgary, never.
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah, he is. He's part of that 1968 Azzurri European Championship winning squad, who also played that unbelievable World Cup in 1970 in that semifinal against West Germany, as it was called back then.
World Cup 1970: The Iconic Clash with West Germany
00:02:33
Speaker
And of course, scored one of the most famous iconic clips of commentary in Italian football history, Riva Riva Riva.
00:02:42
Speaker
And, you know, they went to the World Cup final and of course lost to Brazil after that drubbing, that incredible clash with West Germany, which many say, well, regardless of who won that game, no one would have had any energy left to face off Brazil in the final. And Brazil won comfortably that final. They were exhausted after that classic semifinal against West Germany.
00:03:10
Speaker
It's a sad day because for me, anytime anyone wins the Serie A outside of the top three, the striped clubs from the north, that's an achievement. But if you're not Napoli, Lazio, Roma, and do it, or Fiorentina,
00:03:31
Speaker
you're actually a tiny Sardinia, you're from Sardinia, you're from Sicily. That accomplishment is immeasurable how big that is because of the difficulties at every level to do it. For me, that is his greatest achievement.
Injuries and Records: A Career Cut Short
00:03:50
Speaker
Also considering his career, how ruined and ravaged it was by injuries, his stats are even more impressive.
00:04:00
Speaker
If I'm not mistaken, he stopped playing at 30, didn't he? His career was as good as over at 30. I think he officially retired at 31, I believe, but he was done before he was 30. He broke his leg, I believe, twice and kept coming back.
00:04:19
Speaker
And he had, I think it was a 1970-71 season. He virtually missed almost most of that season with a broken leg. And then he broke his leg again, I think it's 74-75, I believe. And then that was basically the end of his career. He did try to come back, but he could never fully recover from then on. And yeah, so you just wonder if his career hadn't have been
00:04:47
Speaker
ruined by these injuries and curtailed I mean just how many more goals that he would he would have scored and he was
00:04:54
Speaker
He is Italy's greatest goal scorer still. 50 years since he played his last game, 1974 was when he played his last game for the Italy national team. Half a century and he's still the top scorer for the Italy national team. His record for Italy is insane. 35 goals in 42 games. That's almost a goal again for Italy.
00:05:17
Speaker
you know, compared to other nations, that's quite a low number of goals. That's just kind of how it is with Italy. And we've spoken about that a lot on the pod before. But, you know, that, that ratio is absolutely insane.
A Powerful Legacy: Riva's Iconic Playstyle
00:05:30
Speaker
And he was, I mean, his left foot was one of the greatest left foots in the history of football and the rhomboditone, the
00:05:39
Speaker
The exact translation of that is the roar of thunder, or the rumble of thunder. His left foot was so powerful, so powerful that he once broke the arm of a fan in the crowd in a training session in Rome. A fan, a young boy would stand in behind the goal net, and Reaver's shot was so powerful. He was over, I think it was 120 kilometers an hour.
00:06:08
Speaker
And it hit the fan and broke his arm. You know, that's how powerful his shot was. And he played in an age when the footballs were incredibly heavy back then. So heavy, actually, that so many footballers, the kind of the head of heading specialists back then.
00:06:26
Speaker
So many that have ended up having brain injuries and dying prematurely because of the heading of the ball, because they were basically heading leather like bricks of concrete. That's how heavy the balls were. And they were so heavy that back then you only had really a handful of players in world football who had the ability to shoot from long range with power.
00:06:50
Speaker
because the balls were so heavy. You wouldn't have the ability to get your power in your shots. And Gigi Riva was, along with a very few others, like probably Rivolino, Brazil, had an amazing long shot. And Peter Lorimer of Leeds in Scotland had an incredibly powerful long shot. There was only really a handful of these kind of plays. And Riva was one of them. And he was a brilliant finisher, as you can see all by his goal score in Italy.
Italy's Greatest Number Nine: Presence and Skill
00:07:20
Speaker
And he was a big game player. He scored in the final of Euro 68, the European Championship, the first European Championship that Italy won in the final against Yugoslavia. They won 2-0 in the replay. He scored the first goal in the replay of that. He was brilliant in the air as well.
00:07:38
Speaker
fantastic in the air but he was also very brave very aggressive and he was a winner and a leader a silent leader many people said people said like he was a man of few words but he commanded respect and and people listened to him when he did talk and he inspired people just by his presence you know so he was
00:07:59
Speaker
you know, for the Italy national team, definitely the greatest ever number nine Italy have ever had. And we've had some amazing number nines. He was the best of them, the best of them all. No doubt about it. So very, very, very sad loss. And, and of course, after his playing career as well, Nimmer, he had, he played an important role in for Italy.
Managerial Era: Leading Italy to Victory?
00:08:25
Speaker
He was a team manager, wasn't he, in the 90s? Marco Materazzi apologized to him for not shaking Sepp Blatter's hand, obviously because Blatter refused to give Italy the World Cup trophy after the final.
00:08:46
Speaker
Gigi Riva wanted him, you know, when Blatic met with, you know, in 2007 months, a few months after Italy had won it, Materazzi refused to shake his hand, but Gigi Riva was like, you got to let it go, you got to, you know, move on and stuff like that. And he refused to. And he said, maybe you forgot, forgiven me now for not listening to you that time. That's the only time I didn't listen to you.
00:09:13
Speaker
Um, but no, I mean, he, he, he was a manager from 1990 until 2013. So that's a long, long time. And he said he was there when, when Italy won the 2006, well, I remember like seeing him when I went to watch the world or the world cup games and he was the team manager. You could see him. He was the presence when he, I remember after the Germany game, um, he was there, uh, and, um, semi-final and he was a, yeah, he was very important part of their, of their staff. Uh, I remember there was the iconic image from the,
00:09:42
Speaker
the 1994 World Cup when he's consoling Badjo after Badjo misses that penalty in the shooter and Badjo's in tears and that's very probably his most iconic image of him as a team manager and yeah just a legend, a legend and just so loved in Callery.
Comparing Legends: Riva's Impact vs. Maradona
00:10:03
Speaker
I mean he was to Callery
00:10:05
Speaker
what Maradona was to Napoli. Absolutely. That's no exaggeration. I'd say that's pretty much exactly what he was. He was that, I mean, he was that loved and is that loved. If you look at his funeral, go and look at how beautiful his moving his funeral. I think something like Kallere is not a big place. 30,000 people turned up for the funeral.
00:10:29
Speaker
And they were singing songs in his honor and the procession. It was incredibly beautiful. And the 2006, some of the 2006 players covered his, carried his coffee.
Riva's Legacy: A Lasting Impression on Italian Football?
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah. And, and I think Buffon was in tears and there's been some great stories. There's been some really lovely stories about him in the last few days from, from the players that played, you know, for Italy while he was there and some of the players that played with him during his career, some, some, some really wonderful stories. So he's, yeah, it's just a,
00:11:00
Speaker
2020 so far has not been a not been kind to the legends of football, has it? We've lost a lot of legends already in the times. I mean, it's the times they are changing as as Bob Dylan sang wrote, you know, this is this is where we're, you know, it's an end of an era and the start of a new one.
00:11:23
Speaker
And that's how it is. Life is a continuous process. And it's sad because it just can't be stated how important and the towering figure he is in the glorious history. That is Italian football, not just club football, but also national team football.
00:11:41
Speaker
He will, like you said, after 50 years later, his records still stand. It doesn't look like it's going to be broken anytime soon, look at our current number nines. We could do with Gigi Riva right now, couldn't we? If Gigi Riva was alive and well and had his peak this year, this time around, I'd say Italy would win the Euros and the World Cup because he was a monster in the air.
00:12:10
Speaker
It was a monster in the penalty area. Now he was a monster, full stop.