The story of Il Grande Torino
The history of football every so often leaves us with a legendary team. A team that, for one reason or another, manages to be markedly superior to the rest and that is why it remains in everyone's memory as the best. This usually happens on the biggest scenes that the world of football can offer, such as one of the top leagues in England, Italy, Germany, or Spain.
President Novo
Ferruccio Novo was a native of Turin who grew up as a fan of Torino FC and even had the opportunity to play professionally for that team as a defender in 1913. Novo did not have much success as a player but he did have success as a businessman, with the leather factory he started with his brother. In 1939, he took over as president of the maroon club that, to date, had only won the Serie A title one time, in the 1927-28 season.Novo's idea was to form a well-structured club and to do so he brought in experts in different areas to perform related functions within Torino. Novo didn't want to be the one making all the decision and wanted to surround himself with people with the right skills and experience to make those decisions. Following the advice of one of his employees, Novo, as soon as he became president, signed an unknown 18-year-old young man named Franco Ossola from Varese, who would later become a fundamental piece of the most important team in the club's history.
WM
Unlike other great historical teams, Il Grande Torino had several coaches throughout its period of success. However, they maintained the same style and tactical approach with which they characterized themselves. In 1941, Torino signed Felice Borel, a great goalscorer from city rivals Juventus. Borel would only remain at Torino for one year before returning to La Vecchia Signora.Although he did not have a great sporting performance, he had a notable contribution by leading a small group that decided to approach Novo to recommend the implementation of WM, an innovative tactical scheme for the time that had been successful in England when Herbert Chapman implemented it in the Arsenal.
Thanks to the success that Vittorio Pozzo had with Italy in the 1934 and 1938 FIFA World Cups, the tactical scheme known as Metodo was very popular in the country, which was a mostly counterattacking tactic that used 5 defenders distributed in a very particular way on the field, with two midfielders and three strikers. The WM (also called Sistema), consisted of three defenders, four midfielders (two with more containing functions while the other two were more offensive) and maintained the three strikers.
Il Grande Torino
During the first three years of his management, Novo was building something bigger, bringing in players like Valentino Mazzola, Ezio Loik, Romeo Menti and Guglielmo Gabetto. In the 1942-43 season, Torino were crowned champions of Serie A for the second time in their history, as well as the Italian Cup, which they also won for the second time (the previous one had been in 1935-36), by beating Venezia with a final 4-0 score. This was the first time in the history of Italian football that a club won the double (both Serie A and Italian Cup).Due to World War II, the following two seasons were not played and Serie A would be played again in the 1945-46 season, although divided by regions: north and south. Torino participated in the northern region league, which they would win, becoming enormously strong in their stadium as they won 11 games and tied 2 of the 13 they played at home, with an impressive goal record of 39 goals for and only 5 goals against.
A year later, with the leagues unified again, Torino would celebrate once again, this time with a difference of 10 points from its city rivals Juventus, and again, without losing at home (15 wins and 4 draws in 19 games ). In the 1947-48 season, the maroon team once again demonstrated its superiority in the Italian arena by winning Serie A for the fourth consecutive time, this time with a difference of 16 points with respect to second place (AC Milan), and remember that at the time, winning a game awarded only 2 points which makes it even more impressive of course.
Il Toro also scored 125 goals in 40 games and only conceded 33 and continued with its undefeated record at home, which, on this occasion, had a record of 19 wins and one draw in 20 games. In the 1948-49 season the club once again led Serie A, having shown signs of its superiority by, for example, beating AC Milan 10-0. But in May 1949, a few days before the end of Serie A, Torino would embark on a journey that would end the club's golden era.
Superga tragedy
Torino went to Lisbon for a tribute match to Xico Ferreira, captain of the Lisbon team who was celebrating his eleventh season at the club. On May 3, the match was played that ended with a 4-3 defeat for the Italians. The next day, the Torino squad took its flight back to Italy, with very foggy weather, which complicated the flight to the point that the plane crashed into the Basilica of Superga, in the city of Turin.None of the 31 passengers survived the accident, including the 18 Torino players. The only Grande Torino player who survived was Sauro Toma, who did not travel to Lisbon due to injury. More than 500 thousand people attended the team's final farewell. All of Italy mourned the sad end of one of the best teams in the country's history. Torino played the remaining matches of that Serie A season with its youth team and its rivals, in a respectful manner, also presented their youth teams.
The Italy national team of the 1940s was based on Il Grande Torino, remembering that Italy had already been two-time world champions in the 1930s. All that remains is to imagine what could have happened to Torino itself if the plane crash had not occurred, or what would have been for the Italy national team and even what the great teams of Italy would be like today, especially Juventus.