"Today is that day when, once again, we stop and look at the sky. As if to look for a sign, to find those reassuring nods of the hand and head that Gigi Riva gave you when you passed him on the streets of our city. It is the first birthday without him, but never as in this case is it right to speak of total presence. In the example, in the memories, in the numbers, in the wind that lashes the coasts of his beloved adopted land, in the roar of the red and blue passion, in the football world (and not only) that has always admired and celebrated him".
Thus begins the long message from Cagliari Calcio, published on the home page of the club's website, on the day in which Gigi Riva, who passed away on January 22, would have turned 80.
«On November 7, 1944, a gray and rough Lombardy heard the first cries of Luigi, who 19 years later would find his true home in Sardinia, forever. The fate of that boy brutally shaped by life was cruel, who kicked hard, yes, but above all kicked with his soul. The people of the Island immediately felt him as one of them, well before he became "Giggirrivva"», we read in the message, «Gigi was not only the talent, the acrobatics, the spectacular goal: he was the fight, the resistance, the silence that precedes the scream. He was the echo of a distant thunder that brought with it the scent of the sea. Gigi was coherence, perhaps the highest value among the many he embodies. The ability to say no even when it would seem impossible, the hombre vertical as the most appreciated, most appropriate nickname, among the many attributed to him. The 1970 Scudetto as a pearl for the almanacs and a pin that allows us to speak with greater force today about what happened. But a football triumph is reductive to explain what Gigi Riva represented, together with his friends-teammates, for generations. If today even the littlest ones see Rombo di Tuono as a superhero more relevant than ever, it is because his myth resists and renews itself daily, as he did in the face of injustice, torment, tackles».
"Today, on the day he would have turned eighty, we celebrate that man who made entire generations fall in love," the club concludes, "Happy birthday, Gigi. And thank you, forever."
(Online Union)