Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Mancini breaks silence: “I’m going forward for him.”

National team coach Roberto Mancini: “He was the best of us all.”

Italy coach Roberto Mancini recalled his former teammate, assistant but above all friend Gianluca Vialli to the microphones of Corriere dello Sport. “A few days after Sinisa’s farewell, I lost another brother. Indeed, a little brother, as I loved to call him, because we met when we were 16 and never left each other again. All the way together. Youth Italian team, national team, Samp, the joys, the sorrows, the successes and the defeats. And then the two nights at Wembley. In one we cried together in pain and bitterness, so many years ago. In the other we cried with joy, as if we had been united by fate, before his passing.”

Their last meeting in London, in the hospital: “Luca laughed, we joked. I told him that at Samp he was getting a higher salary than me. The president was paying him more than me. Mantovani liked it that way.”

“He was the best of all of us,” Mancini continued, “a complete center forward, a perfect and brave man. I hoped for a long time that he could become the president of Sampdoria, he would have opened a wonderful story like the one he had as a player. For me it was a privilege to be his friend and his teammate and life partner.”

“I thank President Gravina. He wanted him in the national team and I was happy about that. He played a decisive role in winning the European title. I send a big hug to his wife, daughters, parents, brothers and sisters. I say goodbye to another brother, after Sinisa, but with his strength I will go on to dedicate something important to him like the World Cup that he and I dreamed of all our lives.”