Cagliari 1970: una «nuova frontiera» del calcio italiano

Cagliari’s victory in the 1969-70 National football championship represents a turning point in the history of Italian sport “par excellence”. For the first time, a “provincial” and Southern team broke the hegemony of the big and powerful teams from the North. The essay highlights this sporting success in the context of an Italy in the midst of major transformations, between incipient economic crisis, political and social contestation, and the strategy of tension. In addition to the impact of the phenomenon, in particular through the reactions of the press, the analysis explores its implications in two other directions: on the one hand, the repercussions that the sporting triumph had on the socio-economic life of Sardinia as well as on the island’s image in Italy; on the other, the extraordinary popularity of Gigi Riva, a football icon of those years, which also allows us to reflect on the evolution of the sports celebrity in a media and social system that would soon experience profound discontinuities with the past