Gianluca Vialli

Lore & Background

Vialli started his club career at Cremonese in 1980, making 105 league appearances and scoring 23 goals. He moved to Sampdoria in 1984, scoring 85 league goals and winning three Italian Cups, Serie A, and the European Cup Winners Cup. In 1992 he transferred to Juventus for a world record £12.5 million, winning the Italian Cup, Serie A, Italian Supercup, UEFA Champions League, and UEFA Cup. He joined Chelsea in 1996, becoming player-manager the following season, and won the FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Cup Winners Cup, and UEFA Super Cup. At international level, he represented Italy in the 1986 and 1990 FIFA World Cups and at UEFA Euro 1988, helping his nation to a semi-final finish and being elected to the team of the tournament. He scored 259 goals at club level, 16 with the national team, and 11 with the Italy under-21 team, for a total of 286 goals in more than 500 appearances. After retiring, he managed Chelsea and later worked as a commentator for Sky Italia. He was part of the Italy national team non-playing staff as a coordinator when they won UEFA Euro 2020; he stepped back from this role days before his death from cancer.

In Their Own Story

The Wembley night in May 1998. The floodlights hummed above a packed bowl of blue and red, and the air smelled of cut grass and cheap program paper. Vialli stood just inside the box, hands on his hips, watching the ball loop toward him. He turned, controlled with the inside of his right foot, and let it roll into his stride. The shot was not powerful — it was precise, angled just wide of the keeper's reach, the kind of goal that looked effortless in the replay but took a lifetime of repetition to make look that way. The net rippled. He ran. Not toward the corner flag, not toward the camera, but toward the touchline where the Chelsea bench had erupted into a tangle of arms and scarves. He was embraced, lifted, set down, embraced again. He was weeping. He was laughing. He was, for that one night, every fan who had ever stood in the Kop or the Shed End and whispered, *please, just one moment of magic.* And he had given it to them.

Reader's Guide

Vialli's senior career began at Cremonese in Serie C1, winning promotion to Serie B. At Sampdoria he formed a prolific strike partnership with Roberto Mancini, earning the nickname 'The Goal Twins'. He scored a record 13 goals in the 1989 Italian Cup and both goals in the 1990 European Cup Winners' Cup final. He was Serie A top scorer in 1990–91 with 19 goals. At Juventus, he captained the side to a Champions League win in 1996. At Chelsea, he became the first Italian to manage in the Premier League and, at 33 years and 308 days old, the youngest manager to win a UEFA competition. He retired from playing at the end of the 1998–99 season, making his last appearance scoring the winning goal against Derby County.

Did You Know?

• Vialli is one of nine footballers to have won the three main European club competitions and the only forward to have done so.
• He is the only player in European football history to hold both winners and runners-up medals in all three mainstream UEFA club competitions.
• He scored both goals in Sampdoria's 1990 European Cup Winners' Cup final victory over Anderlecht.
• At 33 years and 308 days old, he became the youngest manager to win a UEFA competition, a record later broken by André Villas-Boas.