Gigi Riva: the football legend and all-time top scorer of the Azzurra has died

Italian football mourns the death, at the age of 79, of Luigi “Gigi” Rivawho was admitted last week to the Brotzu hospital in Cagliari after suffering a heart attack.

The European champion with the Blue In 1968 he was awaiting heart surgery after suffering heart failure at home. He had first been hospitalized in the Cardiology sector of the San Michele hospital in Cagliari and was subsequently transferred to the Brotzu hospital in the same city.

“The patient is calm and his general condition is stable”we read in the first medical report while the specialists believed that Riva was in “not serious” health conditions, despite having had to undergo that small operation which in the end he did not survive alive.

In this scenario, the hashtag “Fuerza Gigi” was registered on social media to support Riva, honorary president of Cagliari since 2019, whom he guided to victory in the Serie A championship in the 1969-70 season.

Riva, the Azzurra player who lost the final of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico against Brazil, is the top scorer for the Italian national team, having scored 35 goals in 42 games with an enviable average of 0.83 goals per game.

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