Vertical. Gigi Riva's novel
Unexpected Lives Series
"So went away from us Gigi Riva the champion, on a day
of red sun and soft wind from the sea, on the shoulders of a whole people."
On January 22, 2024, Gigi Riva left us, a man who for many was the last of the heroes of Italian soccer.
In Vertical. The Novel of Gigi Riva, Paolo Piras tells the story of the barely 18-year-old, but already with a very hard life behind him, who arrives bewildered and unconvinced in Cagliari with his older sister, Fausta. Here, in the brief turn of his extraordinary career, he is welcomed as a son, and loved like a son, first by a city and then by an entire island, Sardinia, leading Cagliari to win its historic Scudetto.
Sung and told by teammates and opponents, fans and non-fans, journalists and writers. Gianni Brera called him "Thunderbolt," but it was Gianni Mura who found the most fitting, most literary definition: "Hombre Vertical." A man who does not bend to easy gains, to the flattery of the powerful, to choices of convenience. Even today, Riva's name evokes both strength and fairness, talent and integrity. La elected him forever as a monument of its identity - he who was not even Sardinian, but a Lombard from Leggiuno, the "lean shore" of Lake Maggiore. Why? One has to unravel with patience and amazement the whole thread of his fictional adventure, from childhood mourning to the Scudetto won with Cagliari (the first by a team from the South), from the legendary Mexican exploits to the exemplary path as team manager of the National Team, to fully understand the path of a man who went through poverty, pain, anger, joy, misfortune, glory, pride, serenity, without ever ceasing to be vertical.
He a leader without snootiness. With the courage of the "weak."
The only one who always prevails.
Carlo Baroni, Corriere della Sera - La Lettura