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 of Calcio.

- Keir Radnedge

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 (30). All this in today's era when other nations' marksmen have left Riva's tally far behind: ten Germans, six each from Brazil, England and France, and three from Argentina and Spain. The only "recent" Italians to come anywhere near his tally are Roberto Baggio and Alessandro Del Piero (27).

Nicknamed by journalist Gianni Brera as the "Rombo di Tuono" ("Rumble of Thunder" or "Thunderclap"), Riva was not only a member of the Italy team that won the European Championship on home soil in 1968, but scored the first goal in the replayed victory over Yugoslavia. Two years later, he was there in the Estadio Azteca as the Azzurri finished runners-up to an irresistible Brazil in the World Cup final. Riva had scored twice in the quarter-final defeat of hosts Mexico and once in the semi-final thriller against West Germany. Weeks earlier, in that same 1970, he had led Cagliari to their one and only league title.