© AFP
Former Italian international Gianluca Vialli has died at the age of 58 from complications of pancreatic cancer. In 2020 he was declared cured, but at the end of 2021 he relapsed.
Michael Van Damme
Vialli was part of the Juventus team that won the 1996 Champions League final against Ajax. He played 59 international matches for Italy and scored sixteen times. The striker played the World Cups in 1986 and 1990 and the European Championship in 1988.
In 2017, Gianluca Vialli was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He seemed to have overcome the disease in 2020, but relapsed and has now died from it. “I hope my story can inspire others,” Vialli said four years ago about dealing with his cancer. “That people who have reached a difficult point in their lives can say: by looking at you, I didn’t give up.”
Vialli called the tumor his “travel companion” in life. He never hid the fact that he was afraid to die, but said that courage did not consist in not having fear, but in accepting your fear and learning to live with it.
Vialli had his big break as a player at Sampdoria, where he formed a royal couple with Roberto Mancini, the current national coach of Italy. In 1991 they gave the club from Genoa the only national title in history. From 2019 she worked together with the Italian national team, Vialli as an assistant to Mancini, but in December 2022 Vialli had to stop due to his illness.
