I had the pleasure of being served champagne by Gianluca Vialli in a dressing room before a game not once but twice. The second time was in 2018 at a Stamford Bridge reunion of the 1998 Chelsea team who won three trophies in a year: the League Cup, Uefa Cup Winners’ Cup and Super Cup. I knew Luca wasn’t well when we got back together and when he said he couldn’t play I suggested he could lead us again as manager, a role he carried out with considerable panache, even though he was more ill [with pancreatic cancer] than most of us knew.
The first glass of champagne, years earlier, was much smaller — Luca produced two bottles before his first game as player-manager, against Arsenal in the second leg of the League Cup semi-final in 1998. That was a surprise, particularly since Luca was such a professional, but we went out and won the game 3-1 and then beat Middlesbrough in the final.
It was my second spell at Chelsea. During my first, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Chelsea had the same beer culture, if you want to call it that, as any other English club. The champagne football — or “sexy football”, as Ruud Gullit called it — started when Glenn Hoddle became manager and brought in Ruud. Then Ruud took over and brought in Luca.
There was some controversy over Ruud being sacked, as Chelsea were doing well at the time, but Luca put a premium on continuity when he took over. Tactically he was good, but that is more where the experience of the players took over; we were comfortable in our shape. He empowered us to go and take responsibility and he didn’t micro-manage that part of our week, but he made us feel good about ourselves, and we responded to that.
Perhaps that was what the champagne was about. Though he was only 33, he was incredibly confident in how he saw the game and was very natural and charismatic. It was all authentic, none of it was made up for effect. Day to day he set the highest standards, and fitness was a huge part of how he operated. We worked really hard physically — training, in the gym, we did a lot of work.
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Inevitably, on becoming player-coach things changed from when he was just a player, but even then his influence was huge. I had been playing with Alan Shearer at Blackburn Rovers and Luca was like him and Mark Hughes, who was also at Chelsea; all physically strong, thick-set centre forwards. With Gianfranco [Zola] and Roberto [Di Matteo] also coming to Chelsea, there was also a big culture shift. The quality on the pitch but also that incredible discipline and professionalism they were used to in Italy. That was a huge influence. Luca, coming from Juventus, was at the vanguard of that.
We were a really competitive team in the Premier League and cup competitions, domestically and in Europe. That was the foundation for Roman Abramovich buying the club.
One thing that held us back was the training ground at Harlington, with those terrible pitches, tiny dressing rooms and ridiculous schedule, which meant that we had to be out at lunchtime on some days as students were coming from the university that owned the place. You had people of the calibre of Luca coming in, but he got on with it like the rest of us and it brought us closer together in a way. We were all in that stages in our life — late twenties and early thirties — where we enjoyed each other’s company.
There was a group of us, including myself and Luca, who lived in west London and we used to socialise together regularly, going to restaurants or other new places that had been recommended, with our wives and girlfriends. It was a special time and Luca was at the heart of it. We would laugh at things and get educated by each other and share time with each other’s families. He had a great sense of humour which everybody enjoyed and his English colloquialisms were something to behold. All in all, it was much, much more than football.
He came from a privileged family and had an incredibly successful background in football, but he lived in the present and had no airs and graces. He treated everybody the same.
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He was incredibly driven. Even when he retired he said: “I have to do something where I have to sweat every day, because I am going to work hard at something physically.” That is one of the frightening things. Somebody so dedicated and disciplined and a high-performance athlete — their life being cut short. It’s hit me really hard — and I know it’s hit others — because he is the first of our group to die. We will raise a glass in his honour, nonetheless, for a life well led. Of champagne, of course.
•The fee for this article has been donated to charity.
