In 1970, the boot was on the other foot as Gigi Riva led Cagliari to the Serie A title. Jon Spurling examines the team’s achievement
In the last 40 years of Italian football, only Diego Maradona’s partial deification in Naples can rival the status granted by Cagliari fans to striker Gigi Riva. Thirty-seven years after his Herculean goalscoring feats (21 goals in 30 games) helped the Sardinian side win their only Serie A title, his presence can still be felt around the island. In Cagliari’s Bar Marius, where fans gather before matches, a life-size statue of Riva continues to draw adoring glances. In other bars and cafes on Sardinia, posters of Riva, aka Rombo di tuono (Sound of thunder) continue to adorn the walls, and 46-year-old Danilo Piroddi still claims to be able to “dine out” on the story of how, during a Cagliari training session in 1970, a Riva thunderbolt, estimated at 120 kilometres an hour, broke his arm. “Despite the agony I was in, the doctors still treated me with reverence when I told them how I’d sustained the injury,” Piroddi claims.
