Vice-President Usai at the ‘Festival of Serie A’
Cagliari Calcio’s vice-president, Fedele Usai, spoke at the ‘Festival della Serie A 2024’, staged in Parma in the setting of the Teatro Regio for the first edition of the event organised by the Lega Serie A and dedicated to sector experts and football fans
NO ONE LIKE CAGLIARI
‘We are a reality without equal in terms of characteristics and identity. The passion of the people goes beyond the many difficulties and criticalities in following the team, we think of the away matches to support which you have to make many sacrifices, going beyond the lack of transport and facing many problems. For all these aspects, for the peculiarities of our land, every Cagliari result is something vital and very important beyond the sporting aspect’.
A SPECIAL SEASON
“We come from an emotionally significant year, in January we lost our Myth, Gigi Riva, and for us to know that in the city, behind us, there was always him was something decisive. As Sardinians and as red-blue players his absence is difficult to bear, but his example was fundamental for us every day and even the salvation we achieved was first of all dedicated to him, because like Riva there will be no others. And I would like to thank all the people involved, the clubs of every category, the institutional summits, starting with the Lega di Serie A and the FIGC, for their support’.
THE LAST SALVATION
“We have written another marvellous page, yet another fable linked to Claudio Ranieri, who had started at Cagliari in 1988, opening a magical three-year period with two promotions and salvation in Serie A, and who returned to us, recalled by the club and president Tommaso Giulini in primis at a difficult time. He brought experience and charisma, we had a wonderful year and a half after the difficult start in Serie B in 2022, and now we will continue in that vein.”
THE FUTURE
“We are a club that in 10 years has played for eight seasons in Serie A. A young club, with a good part of Sardinian human resources also at the top, a group that grows year after year and becomes more and more structured. Cagliari today has solid foundations, an important Youth Sector and one of the best in Italy, in the first team there are six Under-23s, most of whom grew up in the nursery, thanks to the scouting area that operates in Sardinia, in the peninsula and abroad with great competence and wide-ranging’.
THE NEW STADIUM
“We are at the decisive stages, we hope that it will definitely accelerate, we have done so much in this sense, being a crucial project for the club, but for the whole city and the island, a sign of how we look not only at today but also at the future. I’ll always remember the car ride back with the president after the 2022 relegation to Venice, and I always think that even the fall represents a starting point, what I wish for those who went to Serie B this year, because sporting failure is never a failure at all, but a moment to get back up and change the page for the better’.
