by Carlo Vulpio
The memory of an evening in Perdasdefogu, and of a vain wait for the arrival of Gigi Riva: he had decided not to be seen by anyone again, due to depression
But why doesn’t Gigi want to come? “It’s not that she doesn’t want to come, it’s that she’s not well, she’s down in the dumps, and she doesn’t want to be seen in public.”
It was August 2, 2020, we were in Perdasdefogu, province of Nuoro, and this was the answer to me from Adriano Reginato, who with Enrico Albertosi had been one of the goalkeepers for Cagliari in the Scudetto. At Perdasdefogu, the writer and journalist Giacomo Mameli, curator of the exhibition «Sette piazze, sette libri», had invited me to present «Il Sogno di Achille», my book on Gigi Riva which had just been published by Chiarelettere. “We’ll do the presentation in the square,” said Giacomo, “because here in Perdasdefogu there is the largest mural dedicated to Gigi Riva, so we’ll make Riva speak under the large image of himself scoring an overhead kick.”
Reginato tried in every way to convince Gigi, and Mameli did the same with Nicola, the first of Riva’s two children. And Ricciotti Greatti and Giuseppe Tomasini, also champions of 1970, also tried, and they too, like Reginato, and Nenè, and Martiradonna, remained to live in Cagliari. Like Gigi. Sardiniated like him. Or perhaps, again like him, Sardinians without knowing it. But none of them managed to move Gigi.
Reginato had done everything up until the last day to make him carefree a little and maybe even to get a half smile from him. But little can be done against the pain of living and Reginato came that evening to talk about Cagliari and Riva with a veil of melancholy in his eyes. He even apologized to all of us for that absence, he himself, who had been the key man, my first ambassador to Riva, the greatest Italian footballer, and who had opened the doors for me with the other players of «that» Cagliari.
We immediately understood what Reginato was telling us: Gigi Riva had chosen not to be seen by anyone again, except by his children, his grandchildren and some friends like Reginato, to whom he confessed every time his profound discomfort towards everything, towards the life. That evening in Perdasdefogu, then, we called the Sardinian group Malasorti, who performed the song «When Gigi Riva return», by Piero Marras, in a poignant reggae version. And Reginato, moved, wanted to read the last page of “The dream of Achilles”.
Gigi Riva’s words that made me love him: «I had everything. Football, the people, the Sardinian people have given me everything. But if I could go back I would give everything in exchange for the childhood I never had.”
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January 23, 2024 (modified January 23, 2024 | 7:11 pm)
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2024-01-23 18:11:58
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