The news spread quickly in the afternoon in Sinnai , causing great condolences. Roberto Piras, 57 years old, Sinnai football youth coach since the mid-nineties, was found dead in a citrus grove he had been looking after for some time. He was struck down by an illness.

Piras was a football coach, but above all a friend of generations of young players. A true gentleman.

This year the club of president Giorgio Olla had appointed him sporting director. On Thursday he was regularly on the sidelines following the club's youth teams.

The news of his death has left Sinnai and beyond greatly bewildered. A good person, a good technician, an excellent friend, almost a family man of who knows how many hundreds of kids he has followed, on and off the playing field.

An unforgettable football tournament played by his Allievi del Sinnai team in 1998 with him on the bench in Kaliningrad , an enclave of Russia.

Today he left the house, went to the vegetable garden in via Sant'Elena, where a corpse was found in the late afternoon. Betrayed by an illness, he died in solitude, he who was used to living with his boys and his audience. The news did not take long to spread among the condolences of his former very young players,

Raffaele Serreli