The plane tragedy that robbed us of our former ruler
Although Juventus of Turin is considered to be the ruler of Italian football – 38 championship titles, 11 of which have come this century, speaks for itself here – there was a time in Italy, when the club known as the White Lady was far from being the most badass team in the city of Turin! As part of the next OlyBet.TV series, we are going to introduce you to the once-upon-a-time greats whose glory days are (unfortunately) long forgotten by now.
But let’s start from the other end. If you google the most famous football club in the world at the moment, the two most popular answers are Real Madrid and Manchester United. In addition, FC Barcelona, Manchester City and FC Liverpool also get a mention in the top five.
However, since football has been played in the world for well over a hundred years, there are also periods in the history of these giants where instead of medals/titles, they fought to get back to the top league of the country.
United and City have also been in the Second Division
United, for example, have spent 22 of their 146-year history in the English Second Division. The corresponding balance of two years younger City is 26, and in fact two seasons spent at the third (!) strongest league level must also be added to this.
This is not a peculiarity of England: Bayern Munich played in the German Second Division in the 1955/56 season, AC Milan in Italy in 1981/82, and Juventus only in the 2007/08 season. The latter, admittedly, due to betting fraud.
But what do we want to say? Although in the football world there are still those who have never played below the Premier League – in Spain they are Real Madrid and Barcelona, in Italy Milan Inter, and the corresponding world record is held by Glasgow Celtic, who have played in the Scottish Championship since its creation, i.e. in 1890 – the life of football is just like regular life and it ebbs and flows.
Meet the Grande Torino
If Juventus, founded in 1897, is the honor and pride of the city of Turin today, then in the 1940s it was Torino FC instead, founded nine years later, which won a total of five Italian championships between 1942 and 1949 – thanks to which they were affectionately called Grande Torino in their homeland.
Although this is speculation, the number could probably have been seven, because in the 43/44 and 44/45 seasons, Serie A was on hiatus due to the Second World War, and the national champion was simply not announced.
But why this speculation? FC Torino was so powerful at that time that their main men – standard 11 were generally: Valerio Bacigalupo, Aldo Ballarin, Virgilo Maroso, Giuseppe Grezar, Mario Rigamonti, Eusebio Castigliano, Romeo Menti, Ezio Loik, Guglielmo Gabetto, Franco Ossola and superstar Valentino Mazzola – also formed a large part of the Italian national team in the 40s. In the best case, as many as ten Torino players have run onto the field at the same time (!) in Azzurri’s blue jersey.
The accident that broke everything
Unfortunately, the victorious era of FC Torino came to a devastating end when the entire team died in a tragic plane crash in May 1949.
The team was on their way back from Lisbon, where they played a friendly match with Benfica, when the FIAT G.212 plane carrying them hit the church tower of the Superga Basilica on top of a hill near the city of Turin due to fog and a faulty altimeter and crashed.
Everyone on board died in the accident: main and reserve players of the Torino club, coaches, officials, masseurs, even the three accompanying journalists and, of course, the entire staff of the plane. A total of 31 people.
As fate would have it, only winger Sauro Toma, who missed the trip due to a meniscus injury at the time, and backup goalkeeper Renato Gandolfini remained from Grande Torino (the third goalie Dino Ballarini was brought to Lisbon instead).
Crowned as a champion posthumously
At the end of the season, these two were given the gold medal of the Italian Championship, because even though after the tragic accident there were still four rounds left until the end of the season – FC Torino led Milan by four points in front of Inter Milan – all the other teams unanimously (!) agreed to crown the Torino national champions and symbolically see the season to an end.
In addition, it was agreed that in the following summer, all teams would donate one player to FC Torino so that they could (for more or less adequate money) rebuild their team. However, this did not save Torino from relegation: for the following seasons, they still fell to the lower half of the Italian Premier League.
It’s true, they didn’t fall out of Serie A in the first go. It didn’t happen for the first time until the 58/59 season, but even then they rose quickly.
