Gigi Riva would have accomplished 80 years old today, Wednesday 7 November 2024. This is the first birthday since, last January, the former great football champion passed away in his beloved Cagliari. This is also the opportunity for the eldest son, Nicholasto remember it and tell it for the person who was hidden behind the figure of the myth.
The memory of Gigi Riva’s son
In a long interview, Nicola Riva retraces the recent years of his father Gigi, who retired in vita private In the 2017.
He talks about his depression and how difficult it was to live with it, the hours in which he decided not to have surgery after having a heart attack and how today his family is still dealing with his disappearance.
Nicola, Gigi Riva’s son
Riva’s last years: depression
“Thunderclap”, as he had defined it Gianni Brerahe left January 22, 2024, aged 79. That night he had had a heart attack and it was hospitalizedNicola Riva tells al Corriere della Sera. “Already from the next morning, when they proposed to him the intervention and he responded I think about itI understood that he knew how it would end. He chose him until the end,” he says.
Gigi Riva was depressed for some time, as his son reveals. His loved ones were close to him until the end “even with silence. No words were needed, just for him to know that we were there”, says his firstborn. A condition which, for Nicola, is linked to a difficult childhood of the father who in a few years, and still in his youth, lost his padrea sister and the madre.
He hadn’t left that one since 2017 casa which now, every Saturday evening, sees the family reunite in memory of the forefather who is no longer with us.
Who is Nicola Riva
Nicola, now 48 years old, recently joined the board of directors Cagliari Soccerafter having attempted a career as a footballer without great success.
His story ranges between memories of youth and the figure of a father austere but also proud of his two children. “I suffered from the fact that it was a bit of everyone. And then he didn’t live with us, he wanted his space”, dice.
We had so many special moments together in recent years that he remembers: “We watched anything other than football. He didn’t like today’s, he didn’t recognize himself, he hated the Our”.
Gigi Riva, the person beyond the myth
With the Cagliari shirt, Gigi Riva – who was Lombard but who in fact became an acquired Sardinian over the years – was the only one who won Scudetto of the club in 1970. His number 11 shirt was retreat. Even today, he remains in the iconography of football as one of the greatest bomber never born, a footballer who, despite the lure of the great Northern teams, wanted to be linked to Cagliari for his entire career, taking them where he had never been and where he never returned.
“Dad felt on his shoulders the weight of the whole islandhad chosen to stay, refusing the money from Juvedell’Inter and of Milan. He had demonstrated that love Sardinia how much Sardinia he loved”, he says, comparing the Sardinian people to a sort of new family for him who had lost it when he was young. They were at his funeral thirty thousand people. “The funeral home was a moment incredible. I saw people of all ages queuing: strangers, disabled people, elderly people, blind people, everyone was crying in front of the coffin. It was synonymous with Cagliari, it was Sardinia, it represented a bond with someone else: some had heard about it from their grandfather, some from their father. Someone in the funeral home told me: dad hadn’t left the house for four years, but he wanted to come for him,” he says.
Although months have passed since his death, there are still many freebies in Riva, from films to public works. In his favorite restaurant, the one he frequented most, his table has now become a sort of altar and, even if the place is full, no one can sit there. In the municipalities of Cagliari they are ready to dedicate it to him murals, squares, vie and even a statue.
Photo source: ANSA
Source: notizie.virgilio.it
