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‘The fate of this team is already the stuff of legend’

VITTORIO POZZO (4 May 1950)

Before some Turin derby games in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (the so-called ‘Derby of the Mole’ after the symbol of the city – the Mole Antonelliana tower), while the Torino team was being read out by the stadium announcer, a number of Juventus fans would pretend to be planes. Swaying from side to side, with their hands stretched out, they hummed as if in flight…downwards. Nnneeeeeoouuu. As the announcer finished the team and came to the trainer – the humming ended: ‘Boom! Superga!’ After the Heysel stadium disaster in 1985 in which over 30 Juventus fans died, the extreme wing of Torino’s hard-core fans had something to fight back with. ‘Another Heysel’, they jeered, or ‘Grazie Liverpool’. There was also a song: trentanove sottoterra, viva viva l’Inghilterra – ‘Thirty-nine under the ground, long live England’. Genoa fans, allied with those of Torino, put up a big banner in the 1990s with these words, during a game against Juve: ‘You gained pleasure from the deaths of the Grande Torino until that shitty wall fell down’ (another reference to the Heysel disaster). Roma, allied with neither team, managed to offend both with ‘Roma hopes for a black-and-white Superga’. Juventus play, of course, in black-and-white. The vast majority of fans of both teams did not indulge in such sick taunting, but many laughed along.

Football rivalry goes very deep in Italy, especially when there is a history of bitter derby games and recriminations, and above all in the cities of Rome and Turin.¹⁶ Given their lowly position and lack of finances, Torino fans have tended to resort to irony, their only weapon left in Turin derbies. This banner was exhibited in a derby in 2001–2: ‘You are uglier than the Multipla’, and referred to a strange new FIAT car. Another Torino banner was about Antonio Conte, Juventus midfielder and captain, who appeared to be going bald and then turned up with a new head of hair. Torino fans accused their rivals of being ‘like Conte’s hair: fake’ (Torino-Juve, 2001–2). Juventus replied with ‘Romero. The city wants to know. Who exactly is your hairdresser?’ Attilio Romero was Torino’s president at the time, complete with an extraordinary hairstyle. On other occasions, the message has been clearer. When Aldo Serena left Torino for Juventus in 1985/6 Torino fans responded with Serena puttana, l’hai fatto per la grana – ‘Serena, you whore, you did it for the money’.

Pain, hatred, reverence, shame: all these emotions are linked to Superga and to the disaster which took place there in May 1949. To get to the basilica (pronounced Sue-pear-ga with the accent on the pear) you take the number fifteen tram from the front of Turin’s beautiful art deco station – Porta Nuova. The tram winds its way through the elegant centre of Turin before crossing the Po. The penultimate stop is called Sassi. From there, a cable car heads straight up the hill to Superga, 675 metres above the city; it takes twenty minutes.

Apart from the stunning view,¹⁷ with the Alps in the background seemingly suspended in the air on a foggy day, there are two reasons to go to Superga. One is to visit the cathedral – which, for a long time, was the official chapel to the Savoy royal family.¹⁸ Designed by the Messina-born architect Filippo Juvara the basilica is constructed in stunning yellow brick. It can be seen from most parts of the city below and is famous for its cupola. In front of the basilica, today, you find a rather squalid car park, two souvenir vans and a temporary bar. In the middle of the car park stands a strange eagle – a memorial to King Umberto I, killed by an anarchist in Monza in 1900.

Nowadays, the cathedral is rarely used for religious services and has fallen into decline as a royal space since the abolition of the Italian monarchy by referendum in 1946 (and their subsequent exile). To the casual visitor, it seems in urgent need of repair, and was occupied only by a beggar and a bored custodian when I visited in 2003. Recently two vandals tried to set fire to the doors of the basilica. The walls inside the church are covered in mindless graffiti, another sign of decline.¹⁹ Most people come on weekends and, traditionally, the Turinese walk up the hill for their classic Easter Day trip, to picnic in the woods around the basilica.

Many other Turinese who ‘go up to Superga’ don’t even visit the basilica. This is where the dream of the Grande Torino ended. It was here that the Fiat G-212 plane crashed – into the top of the hill below the back of the buildings behind the church – killing all 31 passengers and changing the meaning of ‘Superga’ for ever. Since that fateful 4 May 1949 the church has also become a shrine, a museum and a place of homage to the Grande Torino team and, occasionally, a site for fan protests or celebrations. In June 2005, some fans made a ‘pilgrimage’ to the site to mark their team’s return to Serie A. It is also a tourist attraction because of that disaster. Even the public toilets are draped in a Torino flag and a photo of the 1949 squad. The very visibility of the church from the city below has been a constant reminder to the Turinese of the tragedy.

In the tourist literature concerning Superga the crash is usually described as a sciagura, a calamity. On both sides of the basilica there is a sign indicating the way to the ‘Plaque to the fallen of the Superga’. When you see the site of the crash, it is immediately clear that the pilot did not make a small error of judgement – he was a long way from clearing the basilica. On the wall there is a simple plaque, with the names of those who died (I Campioni d’Italia: ‘The champions of Italy’) and the following inscription:

Torino Football Club

In Memory of its comrades – the glory of Italian sport - and those who died with them in a tragic air disaster

4 May 1949

The names of the dead are listed below.²⁰

Superga is a place of memory, and now this memory has found expression in a new museum, close to the royal tombs – the Museum of Claret Red History (Torino play in claret red, or granata in Italian). Most of the collection held here was donated by amateur enthusiasts and fans, and many items were saved when the historic Filadelfia stadium was demolished in 1997. On the way into the museum there are photos of those who died. Inside, there is an assortment of miscellanea; a wheel from the plane; shirts and wooden boxes containing kit and medical items. Other exhibits are more famous. The museum has managed to get hold of the original Trumpet of Filadelfia, which Oreste Bolmida, railway worker and fanatical Torino fan, used to blow when Torino needed to score. His call signalled the beginning of the ‘Claret red quarter of an hour’: the fifteen minutes when the Great Torino would usually crush their opponents. As he sounded the trumpet he would run from one end of the pitch to the other. Legend has it that at that point in the game, Valentino Mazzola would pull up his sleeves (literally, and metaphorically), shout ‘go’, and Torino would go on to win.

Superga is most animated on 4 May when, as on every 4 May since 1949, the team, family members linked to the victims and fans climb the hill to the basilica. There, an annual mass is held to remember the tragedy of the Grande Torino team and the current Torino captain reads out the names of the victims. Wreaths are then placed near the plaque.

A year after Superga, a large crowd, including Mazzola’s sons Sandro and Ferruccio, gathered to pay their respects at the site of the crash, and unveil the plaque. On the tenth anniversary in 1959, Pozzo wrote a bitter article, complaining about the ‘empty words’ that had surrounded the tragedy, which had become ‘a springboard for literary ambitions’. A minute’s silence was observed before all matches in the professional leagues. In 1999, on the fiftieth anniversary of the crash, a special church service was organized with past players and dignitaries from the city. Later there were friendly matches with ex-Torino players wearing original granata shirts. The whole city took part in the commemorations and the press dedicated a series of articles to the memory of the tragedy. Exhibitions and plays were mounted and the vast bibliography on the Grande Torino was further enriched.²¹ Near the abandoned Filadelfia stadium old fans reminisced about the 1949 team as if the players were still alive.

Remembering Superga is not always simple, or uncontroversial. The former Torino financier/owner, Francesco Cimminelli, caused outrage when he described the fans that visit Superga every 4 May as ‘idiots’ (the term in Italian was stronger – coglione chi va a Superga). He has never been allowed to forget that remark. Superga is a sacred place for Torino fans and it marked the inevitable climax of the 50,000-strong ‘March of Torino Pride’ in 2003, organized spontaneously after the worst season in the club’s history.

However, Superga is also a place of kitsch, of bad taste and of fun for some Juventus fans. In the small souvenir shops near the basilica, a number of bizarre items are on sale – a thermometer in wood with a picture of the Grande Torino, a keyholder with the same photo, Torino egg cups and whisky glasses. Juventus scarves are also on sale, along with other Torino memorabilia. The postcards are even weirder. One reads Saluti da Superga – ‘Hello from Superga’ – and displays photos of the wooden Madonna, the church and…the Torino team. Another photo-montage card depicts a side shot of the basilica, with an enormous passenger aeroplane in the act of crashing into the luogo della sciagura – the site of the disaster. This is an official card, it seems, but the picture is so absurd that it could also be a Juventus creation – a joke. In the museum itself, another official card shows the ‘Plaque to the glorious champions of Torino who fell at Superga on the 4 May 1949’. Yet in the corner of the postcard, there is another photo-montage of an oversized passenger plane.