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‘The team has followed the evolution of the nation’

UMBERTO AGNELLI

‘Juventus is a team which unites everyone: from intellectuals to workers…it is a universal team, a footballing Esperanto…and then there are the fans, the real fans, from Sicily to the Aosta Valley. There are eleven million of us. Eleven million’

DARWIN PASTORIN¹

In Florence you can buy stickers which read: zona anti-gobbizzata – ‘hunchback-free zone’. Many shops and even houses carry these stickers, which state that their properties have been ‘de-hunchbacked’. For many of the millions of tourists who pass through the city every year, these stickers must be difficult to interpret. Do the Florentines hate hunchbacks? Have hunchbacks been banned from the historic capital of the Renaissance? The answer to these questions is no, the stickers in question are linked to one of the great modern footballing rivalries. Hunchbacks are seen as lucky in Italy, and Juventus are referred to in this way because, according to Fiorentina fans, they have been extremely lucky over the years. Thus, Juventus followers and the team itself are gobbi. When Florence has signed Juventus players, they have sometimes been symbolically ‘de-hunchbacked’ by their own fans in a strange ceremony. But Florence and, to a lesser extent, Rome are exceptions in Italy’s footballing map, as relatively Juve-free zones. Very few parts of the peninsula have been ‘de-hunchbacked’ and Juventini (Juve fans) are everywhere in Italy. These contrasting passions have created many other nicknames for the club, beyond that of i gobbi. Journalists often call the club the old lady – la vecchia signora – as a sign of respect. Other nicknames are less complimentary – the thieves being another favourite.

As you travel across southern Italy, it is entirely normal to see entire teams of young players decked out in Juve shirts in kickabouts, hundreds of miles from Turin. Juventus have far more fans outside Turin than in their home-town. When they play in Sicily, or Calabria, or Milan, or Sardinia, they attract – and have always attracted – sell-out crowds. For the industrialist and long-time owner of the club, Gianni Agnelli, ‘in the south people dreamed of going to see Juventus’. The reasons for this extraordinary fan-base are both simple, and complicated. Success breeds support: Juve have won the Serie A championship 28 times, nearly twice as often as their closest rivals Milan and Inter. Moreover, Juventus were extremely successful as calcio became a national sport. In the early 1930s, coinciding with the 1934 World Cup victory at home, they won five successive championships.² This was also a time when radio and the sports press began to ‘nationalize’ Italian sport coverage. In the early 1960s, a spectacular new Juventus team fused perfectly with a new generation of post-war fans.

Between 1951 and 1967, Turin’s population rose from 719,300 to 1,124,714. Many of these terroni immigrants – a racist term used by northerners towards southerners – were already, or soon came to be, Juventus fans. Goffredo Fofi, who wrote the best study of southern immigration to Turin in the 1960s, noted that ‘during a Juventus-Palermo match, there were many enthusiastic immigrant Sicilian fans whose sons, by now, like every respectable FIAT worker, backed the home team’.³ When the immigrants returned home, for holidays, weddings or funerals, they took their footballing ‘faith’ with them. Turin was New York for these emigrants, and its myths (wealth, success, modernity) were transferred – including la Juve – to those aspirant migrants still at home. As one immigrant has since said: ‘all of us became Juventini’.⁴ Darwin Pastorin, one of Italy’s most brilliant football writers, has described the Juventus of the 1970s as ‘proletarian’.⁵ Southern migrants were particularly proud of the southern players in their team – defender Antonio Cuccureddu from Sardinia, winger Franco Causio from Apulia and above all Sicilian striker Pietro Anastasi – who was known as the ‘white Pelé’ but also as u turcu: ‘the dark one’.⁶ Marxist writers have interpreted the fandom of FIAT’s southern workers more negatively, as a collective safety valve for the frustration and anger produced on the production line. As Gerhard Vinnai – student of Adorno and Marcuse – wrote in the 1970s, ‘the goals on a football field are the own-goals of the dominated’.⁷

In the 1970s and 1980s yet another generation of Juventini were born – the children of these immigrants – who identified with the glamour and the style of the team’s victories. Juventus’s achievement also coincided with Italian success. The 1982 World Cup winning team contained seven Juve players. The Juventus name also helped. For Gianni Agnelli ‘not having the name of a city has brought us great popularity. It makes us national.’ Juve never went through a slump long enough to lose them fans. Only three times have they seemed about to lose their primacy: in the second half of the 1940s, to Torino, in the first half of the 1960s, to Inter, and in the first half of the 1990s, to Milan. Each time, they have come back, stronger than ever, to reaffirm their pre-eminence and power.

Juventus stamped their authority on Italian football in the 1930s, winning five consecutive championships with a team made up of South American stars with Italian citizenship and many local players. Juve used their money and influence to buy in the best players and coaches, becoming the national team. After suffering the humiliation of Torino dominance in the 1940s, Juventus struggled to rebuild in the 1950s. It was only with the arrival of another two foreign stars – Omar Sivori and John Charles – in the latter part of the decade that Juve began to dictate things again. After a period when Milan was the capital of world football – throughout the 1960s – Juventus built another ‘cycle’ of dominance in the 1970s and 1980s. Under Giovanni Trapattoni – a pragmatic Milanese coach and brilliant man-manager – Juve dominated for more than a decade. An impregnable defence with Dino Zoff in goal and Gentile, Scirea and Cabrini – was complemented by superb ball-winners such as Beppe Furino (who won a record eight titles between 1972 and 1984) and Marco Tardelli in midfield. Up front, these teams were blessed with skilful ball players and deadly strikers, from Paolo Rossi to ‘the baron’, Franco Causio. Juve also bought the best foreigners – Liam Brady, Zibi Boniek and above all Michel Platini. They rarely went wrong in the transfer market, or in their choice of manager.

A final ‘cycle’ of victories was built up by Paul Newman lookalike Marcello Lippi, who added another column to the Juve pantheon, again with a combination of stern defence, ball-winners and skill in midfield, including Zinedine Zidane at his peak, and free-scorers up front, from Roberto Baggio and Fabrizio Ravanelli to Gianluca Vialli and Alessandro Del Piero. Lippi took control of the team in two separate spells, winning five titles in seven years, as well as the Intercontinental Cup, dramatically snatched by fan idol Del Piero in 1996.

Only one trophy consistently eluded Juventus, so much so that it has come to be seen as cursed by fans and players at the club. For a team with 28 championships, more than half of them since the setting-up of the European Cup, Juventus’s record of just two victories is a desperately poor showing. In seven finals, Juventus have lost five times. In 1973, they were outclassed by Johan Cruyff’s Ajax. Ten years later, after going through the whole tournament unbeaten, they fell to an outrageous long-shot from Hamburg midfielder Felix Magath. Anti-Juve fans partied into the night and Grazie Magath! graffiti appeared everywhere. In 1985 the Heysel disaster took place before the final won by Juventus. Many people do not recognize the trophy awarded that year. Juve were back in the final in 1996, and this time they won – at last – beating Ajax on penalties. Lippi’s team reached the final twice more in the next two years, losing to Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid respectively. More graffiti appeared: Grazie Real! Grazie Borussia! In 2003 Lippi and Juventus were back for more, losing again, on penalties, to Milan. Seven finals, one victory; a terrible record that has divided Italy.

Well-timed (and continual) success was not the only explanation for Juventus’s huge fan-base. FIAT were – and are – Italy’s biggest company, producing millions of cars and providing millions of jobs. FIAT, for 100 years, was Italian capitalism, and FIAT signified power, influence, a way of life. Many claimed that Italy was really controlled by FIAT – FIATALY. Southern immigrants yearned for a job in Mirafiori – the huge factory constructed on the edge of Turin in 1939. When it was opened the plant covered six per cent of the entire area of Turin and the workers’ café could hold 10,000 people. Production lines ran for 40 km. Hundreds of thousands of peasants took the ‘train of the sun’ – especially in the 1950s and 1960s – to cold, foggy Turin to pursue the dream of a job with FIAT. In the north, they faced racism and hardship, but many also found a steady job and the ability to create a future for their families. Umberto Agnelli – of the Agnelli family who have always controlled FIAT – even claimed that ‘one of the reasons which led migrants to choose Turin during the great migrations of the 1950s and 1960s was the possibility of going to see Juventus play’.

FIAT built schools, sent the children of its workers on holidays, constructed housing and provided pensions. The company made vast profits, some of which trickled back to its workforce across Italy. Juve was FIAT’s team, and not just symbolically. The Agnelli family loved football, running the club as a family affair – just as they ran their company. The Agnellis went to games, spoke to players, sacked and employed managers, commented on tactics and gave interviews to the (usually fawning) sporting press.

Juve’s victories were personally associated with the Agnelli family, who were loved and hated in equal measure. Gianni Agnelli, the tall, dapper, witty industrialist, was particularly important for post-war Juventus. He was a master of the pithy soundbite, giving players nicknames which stuck, and was also extremely canny with his transfer deals. The players were in awe of him, as were many fans. When he died in 2003, thousands of Turinese queued all night to pay respects to his body, on the futuristic race-track roof of the Lingotto ex-car factory in Turin. Many stories are told about ‘The Lawyer’, as Agnelli was known thanks to his degree in law. He dubbed Zibi Boniek ‘beautiful at night’ because of his great performances in European games. As usual, the nickname contained a hint of criticism. Boniek would often disappear on Sunday afternoons, in mundane league matches. Alessandro Del Piero was called Pinturicchio, after the Renaissance artist.⁸ Again, the nickname was double-edged. Del Piero was a genius, but he was also a bit inconsistent and a touch lightweight. Only Platini really got the better of Agnelli. On one occasion, The Lawyer went down to the dressing room before a match, only to catch Platini puffing on a cigarette. ‘That worries me,’ Agnelli said to Platini. Instantly, a riposte came back. ‘You only need to worry if he starts smoking,’ said Platini, pointing at Massimo Bonini, the tireless midfield ball-winner in that Juventus team.

Whilst Gianni Agnelli was the public face of Juve, his brother Umberto was a superb football administrator, with an eye for the right player at the right time, who did the necessary dirty work for the club within the power-bases of the football and sports federations. The Agnelli family constructed a powerful myth known as the ‘Juventus Style’. Unlike other Italian clubs, it was argued, Juve accepted defeat with dignity. The epitome of this style was Giampiero Boniperti, who moved smoothly from star player to all-conquering president, presiding over a prodigious series of victories in the 1970s and 1980s.⁹ Players, officials and managers were all expected to adhere to the rigours of the Juve style.

Juve, unlike many Italian clubs, has always been run as a business. Its books have usually been balanced – again unlike most other clubs – and it has tended not to splash out huge sums on players. When the price has been right big stars have been off-loaded: Juventus sold Christian Vieri and Thierry Henry in the 1990s. At certain times, crises at FIAT were reflected in the way Juve was run. In May 1978, FIAT offered much less for star striker Paolo Rossi than Vicenza, a minor club. At the time, the car company was going through a bad period. It simply could not be seen to be spending massive amounts on one football player when its workers were being laid off.

Of course, many people hated FIAT, and loathed the Agnellis. Juventus were widely reviled, and not always for purely footballing reasons. In the late 1960s a wave of wildcat strikes hit the company in what became known as the ‘hot autumn’. For a time, the company’s factories in Turin were occupied as FIAT lost authority over many of its employees. Demonstrators marched through the city behind banners that read ‘We Want Everything!’ (Vogliamo Tutto!). Italy’s ‘Long May’ – violent, revolutionary, fascinating – lasted at least until 1980 and its capital was Turin. Later, FIAT managers were kidnapped, beaten up and even killed by fringe ‘red’ terrorist groups. In this context, football might have appeared irrelevant, but of course it wasn’t. Many of the strikers were also Juve fans, and continued to support the team of the company with which they were virtually at war. This contradiction underlined – once again – the fundamental truth that you cannot choose or change your football team for political reasons.

FIAT have always attracted fans from all sides of the political spectrum. Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 to 1964, was a Juventino. So was Giorgio Almirante, leader of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Other Juve fans have included Walter Veltroni, left-wing Mayor of Rome, Luciano Lama, leader of the communist-linked trade union federation in the 1970s, and Henry Kissinger.

Juventus are a team of contradictions. A club with something like eleven million fans in Italy, they rarely fill their home stadium, often playing before paltry crowds in Turin. They are the most loved of all teams, and the most hated. Millions rejoice when they win, different millions exult when they lose. Being a Juve player or manager carries massive pressure. A championship is just another victory, when you have already won 27 times. Twice, managers have been sacked after coming second.¹⁰ Dino Zoff was dismissed as manager after winning the Italian Cup and the UEFA Cup in the same season. And then there are the conspiracy theories, petty jealousies, power-games and scandals. Juve can never win ‘normally’, they never triumph simply because they are better than everyone else. There is always something around which suspicion can be constructed – and examples of ‘favouritism’ or ‘psychological slavery’ are not hard to find in calcio’s long and controversial history. Juve fans are doomed to be insulted and derided whatever happens on the pitch. Still, they can always look on the bright side. Whenever Juve fans feel slightly down, they can take comfort in the long decline of their bitter rivals. Until 2006, that is, when calciopoli brought the Old Lady to her knees. As a result of the scandal Juventus were relegated to Serie B for the first time in their history and stripped of two championships. Every Juventus fan remained in a confused state for the whole season; every anti-Juventino was in ecstasy. It was a difficult year, and the fans showed their displeasure by staying away. Even when they did turn up, they often booed their team. Steadily, Juventus wiped out the points deficit and climbed up the table. Del Piero had an excellent season, finishing as top scorer, and promotion was confirmed with a 5–1 away victory at Arezzo in May, where the players put on pink shirts that read Bast…A! Enough! (with a play on the letters ‘B’ and ‘A’). Juve were ready to make their adversaries suffer again in the 2007–8 season. The world had been turned – albeit briefly – upside down.

Torino, the other Turinese team, have had a history of triumph and tragedy. Theirs is a story of a small club that became unbeatable, and then vanished in a disaster that transformed Italy. Torino’s history can only be written with reference to one date. Everything revolves around that moment: before, and after.