“Let's symbolically name the new stadium in the city of Cagliari after the great Gigi Riva”. The proposal comes from the mayor Paolo Truzzu: it has been poured into a motion, already signed by all the municipal councilors, which will be voted on on Tuesday during the meeting in Palazzo Bacaredda.
The document has been ready since December. But the opinion of the person concerned had to be awaited. And the striker gave his go-ahead: «Gigi is happy, the family approves», explains the mayor, who adds: «Obviously it is also a way to wish him a long life. But dutiful: Gigi Riva is Cagliari, Cagliari is Gigi Riva».
He himself, reads the provision that will be approved by the city council, "has always defined himself as "a Sardinian born in Lombardy". In Sardinia he grows up as a man, fully identifying himself with the people, with his family
customs and its traditions, becoming a real legend for the people". Also thanks to the historic scudetto won in '70, which “represented a historic goal and probably would not have been
the only one if Gigi Riva hadn't been held back by the serious injuries that led him to leave the pitch”.
Furthermore "he chose Cagliari as his home, he never left the island again, and even when he was in the midst of his success as a footballer he knowingly gave up on millionaire salaries". And this is history. Of a man who was and is "a friend of the fishermen, of the shepherds, of the common people, who totally identified himself with Sardinia, so much so that he now considers himself Sardinian in all respects".
Gigi Riva, continues the text of the motion, “is the example of the modern hero, capable of giving up the lure of power, money and easy success. He was a man of integrity who renounced any compromise in order to follow his dream and that of an entire people, representing a concrete factor of social redemption for the whole of Sardinia and his native Cagliari”.
For all these reasons, the stadium that will be born, even before rising, is named after the man who is already a legend, for the Sardinians. And since it is a sports facility, the law prohibiting the naming of streets or squares after people who have not been dead for at least 10 years is not applicable.
Henry Fresu