Celebrating a legend
The midweek round of action in Serie A is the fourth round of matches in ten days - and surely another chance for some choice refereeing controversy.
It may be wise to detach our attention from the whirlwind of games and take time to celebrate one of Italy's true football heroes, Gigi Riva. His 60th birthday, last Sunday, with the plethora of newspaper stories and TV clippings it spawned, gave younger fans an opportunity to go back in time and witness an era that, for some of them, seems centuries old.
The black and white TV footage widely seen in a number of programmes brought back memories of a time when one could remember each and every match that was broadcast live, because there were so few of them you took each one to heart as a precious gem and you counted down the days, or the weeks, before the next one, not the hours or minutes like now.
And few of those who were at least partially conscious during the Sixties and Seventies could ever forget what Gigi Riva did, for his team and for his country.
The nickname the late, legendary journalist Gianni Brera gave him, "Rombo di tuono" (Rumble of thunder), may sound a tad baroque but it certainly helped define Riva as the best Italian striker of his generation, at a time when the nation's football was going through a controversial phase (on the other hand, when exactly hasn't it?).
Riva was born in 1944 in Leggiuno, near Varese in Northern Italy, and it must be said an entire generation of football fans knew the existence of a place called Leggiuno only because it was Riva's birthplace. Since it has been known for nothing else.
He had a rough childhood: his father Ugo, a decorated soldier in the First World War, had died when Gigi (Luigi is his real name, but in Italian very few Luigis do not become Gigis) was only nine years old.
That meant Gigi had to spend a few years in a boarding school run by priests, from which he ran away a few times because he could not stand the strict regime and - as he told daily newspaper La Repubblica last Friday - 'the humiliation of being poor and having to say thanks to the people who were gifting us bread and used clothes'.
As a promising player with youth side Laveno, he caught the eye of his favourite club, Inter, but made the mistake, in his youthful exuberance, of boasting about Inter's invitation to attend a training session and the Laveno directors, who held what amounted to his registration, barred him from leaving.
After he joined Legnano, he again attracted the attention of big clubs but was sold to Cagliari in the spring of 1963. At that time, Cagliari were an obscure Serie B side and football in Sardinia, the island of which Cagliari is the capital, was an afterthought in the calcio.
The red-and-blue side was seen as an outpost, as was the island itself, but Riva's arrival, along with others players who would make a name for themselves, helped Cagliari gain promotion to the Serie A in 1964 - and the islanders never looked back.
They cruised to an historic Scudetto in 1969/70, and by that time Riva had already become one of Europe's most feared strikers. He'd made his international debut in 1965, but had been deemed surplus to requirements for the 1966 World Cup and had only been brought along to England as a non-squad player, in order for him to get a taste of a major competition.
After Italy's disastrous first round exit, the resulting fall-out saw the arrival of foreign players and coaches banned - although those who were already in the country were allowed to keep their jobs - but no foreign star at that time could have stolen the limelight from Riva, who was reaching his prime.
He was Serie A's top scorer in 1966/67 with 18 goals, 1968/69 with 20 and 1969/70 with 21, but his true legacy was the way he dominated and frightened defenders with his power.
Looking at TV footage now, he appears too skinny - as all players from a previous era tend to do - but his powerful upper torso and strong legs made him one of the hardest hitters of a ball of his time. And his penchant for scoring spectacular goals meant he was just a right-wing cross away from forcing his way into the Sunday night highlights.
A specialist of the bicycle kick - he scored a beautiful one in front of a full house in Vicenza during Cagliari's Scudetto season - he was often seen to try things other players wouldn't even think about.
It has been said his competitive spirit came from his difficult childhood, and he admitted as much in one of the many interviews he gave last week. His stubbornness and no-nonsense approach made him an icon for the Cagliari fans and all Sardinians, who were fascinated by this Northerner who'd chosen to leave his roots and make the island his new home, as it still is.
His gravelly voice reveals his penchant for smoking, something which he never stopped doing while he was a player, and he's candid about this and other habits his contemporaries had.
While trying to defend Francesco Totti after he had spat at an opponent during Euro 2004 he actually said that although it was despicable act, Totti shouldn't be brought in front of the firing squad.
He added, in open contrast to his former Italy teammate Gianni Rivera who'd criticized the behaviour of today's players, that stars from his own era behaved much worse.
'We'd smoke like crazy, waste all of our money and kick each other to a pulp on the pitch,' Riva explained. 'Only there were fewer TV cameras that could catch that.'
This frankness - he also added he can barely watch today's football, which has become a non-contact sport - has earned him a number of invitations from left-wing and right-wing political parties to join them but he rejected all advances, because he wants to be able to speak his mind without constraints (which tells you something about politics in general).
"Rumble of thunder" retired in 1975 after a bad injury. His body had already taken a battering - he sustained two broken legs while on international duty - and it is a tribute to his strength that he managed to come back at a time when that kind of injury could mean the end of a career.
International readers of a certain age will remember Riva forever for his powerful style and for his goals with the Azzurri. He's still Italy's top goalscorer with 35 goals in 42 matches which earned him a European Championship medal in 1968 (he scored the first goal in the replayed final against Yugoslavia).
He failed to score two years later in the World Cup final against Brazil, but it is rumoured that at half-time, with the scoreline at 1-1, Pele moaned in the dressing room that 'now Riva will wake up, and we're done'.
It wasn't to be, but the fact the world's best ever footballer was allegedly so scared of what his rival could do tells us all we need to know about Gigi Riva.
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