Yesterday was a day full of emotions at the Rossoblù Museum, a tribute to the former Cagliari player Antonio Solla, the Quartese player who flew on tour with the team to the United States in 1967.
Adriano Reginato, Italian champion in 1970, also participated in the event.
There are experiences that you carry with you throughout your life, there are emotions that make you tremble when you experience them and also when you remember them. Quartese Antonio Solla yesterday returned ‘virtually’ to 1967, to the tour in America he experienced as a very young man with Cagliari Calcio, telling it and telling himself in front of the fans and the Mayor of his city.
At the Rossoblù Museum in via Diaz, an amarcord evening promoted by those who wanted and created this cultural, as well as sporting, journey dedicated to Cagliari Calcio, in the center of Quartu, Simone Gallus. An initiative, carried out with the support of the municipal administration, to celebrate Solla and allow him to reunite with an old glory of Cagliari such as Adriano Reginato, who also won the historic scudetto in 1970 with the rossoblù shirt and who shared the tour with the Quartese in America 1967.
In those years Cagliari was one of the strongest teams in Italy; in the United States, however, football was not yet particularly followed, overshadowed by other sports such as basketball, baseball and American football, which are still popular today. However, there were also those who had the will and perhaps even a certain interest in making the movement grow. The newly formed United Soccer Association therefore organized a summer championship, with the participation of several European (Italian, but also English) and South American (Uruguay) clubs, which for the occasion took the name of the city that hosted them. Cagliari Calcio thus became the Chicago Mustangs, participating with various members of the squad who would later win the tricolour, supported by some promising players ‘promoted’ from the youth team, including the fast striker Antonio Solla.
Twelve matches in the States, very close together and with flights lasting several hours to move from one city to another. Playing in a team with great champions was certainly pleasant, but perhaps even more so was the opportunity to see, discover and touch a decidedly different club, and at that time in various respects far ahead of Italy. It was undoubtedly a life experience, and today it is still an indelible memory.
“First of all I would like to thank Simone Gallus and the municipal administration for this tribute – declared Antonio Solla -. I didn’t expect it. It confirms what I think about football and what it has given me: not only satisfaction on a sporting level, but above all the opportunity to meet many people and visit many cities, things that if I hadn’t played football I would never have been able to achieve. The trip to America is a perfect example: I always carry it in my heart.”
On this occasion, Gallus presented both Solla and Reginato with a commemorative plaque “for having represented the red and blue colors in America”. The Mayor Graziano Milia, as has become his tradition, instead wanted to pay homage to them with the pin of the Four Moors, surrounded by green like the Quartese flag for the first, surrounded by red and blue, the colors of Cagliari, for the second.
The evening was also attended by the former international referee, now municipal councilor for public works, Antonio Conti, as well as Antonello Deidda, author of the book ‘We were young in 1967’, which recounts in detail that summer trip to the Great America of Cagliari Calcio , for the occasion Chicago Mustangs.
