We all wanted to be Gigi Riva. Wearing a white shirt, with the number 11 handwritten on the shafts in black marker. Wearing matching shorts, knee-length socks, and dark boots found under the tree at Christmas because we'd been good kids. Trampling on stony, humpbacked dirt roads that it was an exaggeration to call pitches, every fall a wound; it was your imagination that made you roll on the soft grass of San Siro. Thus begins Cagliari Calcio's remembrance of Rombo di Tuono today, November 7, 2025, on what would have been his eighty-first birthday .
The club's tribute goes back many years: " We kicked a volatile Supertele with all the power we could muster, left-footed if possible, aiming for the space marked by the two overlapping stones, just as we'd seen him do the previous Sunday : the heavy leather ball ended up under the crossbar as if blown by the force of the mistral wind that was raging at 100 miles an hour over the Sant'Elia. We tried to imitate his overhead kick, ruining our backs and elbows."
Some, the most fanatical, went to the barber and asked him to style their hair the way he wore it, curly and unruly. We wanted to be good and strong like him, who wasn't afraid of the dark and spoke little, because the strong didn't need to get lost in a thousand words; the strong simply acted . What mattered was the gaze: firm, fixed, sharp. What mattered was the head held high and the back straight...
"A symbol, arrived here by chance, or not, perhaps it was all written, the inescapable destiny that not even the gods could escape," Cagliari continues. "Gigi, along with his other pirate companions, made us fly high, put us on the map, made our dreams come true; he made us proud, gave us an identity, erased ugly labels. But we learned this much later. For us, Gigi was the champion who showed the way, the hero on the side of justice, and justice was Cagliari and Sardinia, at most the national team. Belonging, loyalty, respect; courage, heart, passion for our colors. And again, the boldness to fight against superior opponents, the determination not to give up when all seems lost and life seems to be dead against you, to start over every time, ignoring the pain of the scars."
Gigi Riva would have turned 81 today. "For all this, today, November 7th, we gather with a glass in our hands to celebrate his birthday. To remember his goals, we have them imprinted in our memory and we never tire of seeing them again, in black and white or in color. To honor a past that is still present and will always be the future. Because, as Gianni Brera wrote, there has never been anyone like him and never will be again. On and off the pitch . True to himself, he never betrayed anyone. He could have taken on the universe, but he preferred to live in our world. A choice of love, what else?"
" Today we miss his silences, but he continues to speak to us . With the same strength, dignity, and modesty. We raise our glasses, eternally grateful for what he gave, for how he did it, for the example he passed down. Happy birthday, Gigi."