“We have lost one of the great symbols of Italian football. A fantastic player and above all a real man”
Fabio Capello pays tribute to Italy great and his former Azzurri team-mate Luigi Riva
“Jorge Griffa was the guru of football development in Argentina, and Newell’s followed his ideas which placed their academy at the top of the scale”
Former Argentina and Real Madrid forward Jorge Valdano on the late Jorge Griffa Luigi RIVA (1944-2024)
The great Luigi “Gigi” Riva was an old-fashioned sort of football hero, a superstar goalscorer loyal to an unfashionable club who turned down a relentless stream of offers from the giants ofCalcio.
Riva, more remarkably, remains the Italy national team’s all-time leading marksman on 35 goals in 42 games; none of today’s fellow countrymen approach his level or scoring rate (0.83 goals per game). Second and third behind him are pre-war heroes Giuseppe Meazza (33) and Silvio Piola
