When Gigi Riva first stepped off the plane onto the island that he would come to call home, he was not best impressed.
“Sardinia seemed like Africa to me: the island where they sent people in order to punish them,” Riva later quipped. For the boy from Lombardy, this outpost of changeable weather and rough seas seemed like some sort of exile.
The reaction of the Italian media when Riva first represented the national team a few years later was one of similar disdain. On just his second cap, his performance against France was harshly criticised by noted journalist Gianni Brera, who said that the 21-year-old Riva was ‘one-footed’ and ‘an incomplete player’.