The
great Torino team which flew to Lisbon for a friendly on 1 May 1949 had
all but clinched their fifth championship in a row. With four games
left, they were four points in front, had gone their last eighteen games
unbeaten, and had not lost at home for 93 games -since 1943. Captain
Valentino Mazzola nearly missed the plane with a fever, and some
newspapers reported that he had actually remained at home. Other rumours
claimed that the team's captain had got off at Barcelona. Both,
unfortunately, turned out to be false. After the game in Lisbon, 31
passengers and crew flew back from Portugal on 4 May. The weather was
terrible that afternoon. Heavy rain lashed down onto the city and dark
clouds hung over the hills and mountains that surround Turin, down on
the Po river plain. Visibility was poor. It was as if night had fallen
early. That
afternoon there were very few people on the hill up at Superga, where
an eighteenth-century basilica stood, high above Turin. A peaant saw a
plane fly past just above his head, another heard the same aircraft
circling in the mist and fog. At
17.12 p.m. on 4 May a car screeched to a halt near to the restaurant
which stood on the small square next to the basilica. The driver said he
needed to use the phone, urgently. The journalist he spoke to at the
national press agency refused to believe his story. Soon firemen and
police vans began to arrive. A FIAT G-212 plane had smashed into a wall
at the back of the church. The wood around the building was on fire,
despite the driving rain. Nothing could be done for the 31 victims and
there were no survivors." Bodies, luggage and wreckage were strewn over a
wide area. As news spread, thousands of fans began to make their way up
the hill, in the pouring rain, in a spontaneous and silent procession.
The
horrific task of identifying the victims fell to Vittorio Pozzo,
journalist and ex-manager of Italy. It was not easy - many of the bodies
were burnt beyond recognition. Pozzo walked around the crash site for
four hours but some victims were only identified from documents found in
their pockets or rings on their fingers. Pozzo, who wrote for La
Stampa, the Turin daily, filed his copy that same evening: 'The Torino
team is no more,' he wrote, 'it has disappeared, it is burnt, it has
exploded ... the team died in action, like a group of shock troops, in
the war, who left their trenches and never came back.' This article was
later used in Turin schools as an example of the use of rhetoric. Pozzo
knew many of the players well. He had picked a record ten members of the
squad for the Italian national team in 1947. In
Turin's local L'Unita offices (the communist daily) the news came
through at 17.30. A few journalists there jumped into a car and drove up
the hill, passing hundreds of other people on foot and many other
vehicles. At the top, they were told that 'everyone was dead'. Chaos
reigned. Two huge wheels were strewn fifty metres apart. People stood
around in shock; most were crying.
Special
late editions of newspapers were printed, and people crowded around to
read reports right across Italy. Work stopped at FIAT for one minute's
silence, and shops closed all over the city. Trams going into the town
centre were packed with people desperate for more news. A paper in Milan
led with this headline: 'Italy cries for its champions: Champions
forever'.12 A 38-year-old woman in Bologna committed suicide on hearing
the news. The tragedy united left and right, at the height of the cold
war. L'Unita wrote that 'the whole of Italy' was 'alongside the burnt
bodies' of the team. In Rome, Parliament suspended its sitting once the
news had come through. The tragedy also involved Juventus, albeit
marginally. Leslie Lievesley, a Berkshire-born former Crystal Palace
player who had gone on to coach the Dutch national team, had worked with
Torino since 1947. In 1949, he was set to become the coach of the other
Turin team. The news of his appointment broke three weeks before the
disaster, in April 1949.
The
Torino of the 1940s were not known as Grande Torino for nothing. After
winning the 1942-3 championship by just one point from Livorno, Torino
again finished a mere point clear of Juventus in a truncated tournament
in 1945-6. After that, the domination began in earnest. In 1946-7,
Torino scored 104 goals in 38 games, conceding just 35. They ended up
ten points ahead of Juventus. The following year was astonishing: 125
goals in 40 games, with only 33 conceded, and nineteen out of twenty
games won at home. Torino massacred other teams, beating Alessandria
10-0, Lucchese 6-0 and Salernitana 7-1. One of the team's most powerful
performances was away to Roma, in April 1946. After nineteen minutes,
Torino were 6-0 up. At half-time - still on 6-0 - the manager told the
team that there was no need to humiliate their opponents. The game ended
7-0, with the Roma crowd applauding the Torino team off the pitch. In
their five winning seasons, Torino notched up 483 goals and conceded
just 165." Nobody, apart from Juventus in the 1930s and Milan in the
1990s, has ever come close to such a record. At least half a million
people attended the funerals of the players, journalists and Torino
staff on 6 May. The city's streets were packed with mourners, on another
grey, rainy day. The funeral ceremony was transmitted live on national
radio, and the coffins were transported through the town on huge lorries
with flags and the names of the victims written on black cloth. At the
funeral, the president of the football federation, Ottorino Barassi,
read out the names of the dead players, beginning with Captain
Valentino. There was no need to use his surname - Mazzola - everybody
knew him by his first name. Barassi ended his speech with 'this is the
fifth cup, Torino's cup, look how big it is, it is filled with the
hearts of the world'. Thirty thousand people walked up to Superga to pay
their respects and leave flowers that very day.
Nothing new just repost for 75th anniversary
ITA dvdrip
E.Sempre.Toro.Twb22.blogspot.com.mkv
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