Italy coach Roberto Mancini revealed Gianluca Vialli told him, ‘Italy will have to win World Cup 2026.’ The Azzurri boss was a guest on the show ‘Porta a Porta‘, commemorating Vialli’s life, and shared his memories of his former teammate and friend, dating back to their days at Sampdoria:
“Gianluca told me that Italy will have to win the 2026 World Cup and that he would be with us. He will certainly be very close to us and we hope to dedicate a great victory to him soon.
I went to see Luca the last time in London before the end of the year,” Mancini explained, “I was a bit scared. He woke up, we laughed, we joked, we called Lombardo…. He told me ‘I am serene, stay calm.’ He cheered me up. He was very lucid, we met again as we left each other: all was good.
Memories of you hug after winnings the EUROs?
“It was a hug that encapsulated everything on a sporting level, but not only that. He was already not well, but I hope that moment lifted him up a bit. Luca was a key character in those victories of ours. When he spoke to the players they picked up everything.
“Luca at first did not tell me about the illness, he did so only in 2019, and when he revealed it to me he said, ‘I never told you so that you would not suffer.’ A lot has changed since that day and I hoped until the end that a miracle could happen.”
“Since Luca and I had never fought, we wanted to try. It was in training at Sampdoria, he called me by my last name and I did the same, it happened because of a wrong pass. We tried to fight, but we couldn’t, it wasn’t very successful, and after five days in the national team they made us make up at the training camp. We lived symbiotically for ten years, we lived close to each other, we even went to dinner together. He is truly the friend you have for life. When our paths parted, we didn’t hear from each other for a while, but when we got together again it was as if we had always been together.”
