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‘At the “Fila” we must start to make “Toro”’

MASSIMO GRAMELLINI

‘A physical and moral black hole in Turin, a levelled ground of ruins’

La Repubblica, 10.3.1999

Torino continued to train in the Filadelfia until the 1980s. For coach Emilio Mondonico the secret of the magic of the Filadelfia was that ‘people live in symbiosis with the players…it was a home, a monument, a den’. An added touch was the visibility of the ground afforded to many residents in surrounding houses. Young fans mingled with older fans and the players at training sessions, held in front of the one remaining, long stand. In 1990 things began to move, at last, or so it seemed. The stadium was handed over to the club and a project was drawn up for a new 30,000-capacity ground. For the then president, ‘the plan to go back to the Filadelfia’ was ‘above all an ideological issue’. In 1994, the inevitable happened, after years of neglect. The stadium was closed with the club claiming it was now too dangerous to allow people in to watch the team train. Sessions were moved to a FIAT field on the outskirts of town. Whereas 1,000 fans would still turn up at the Filadelfia, only 200 fanatics bothered to travel out to the new venue.

The Filadelfia site began a long decline. Later in the same year a group of punks occupied the site and played football on the overgrown pitch and drug-users began to frequent the abandoned field at night as it emerged that Torino had debts of fifty thousand billion lire. Most of the team was sold off as President Calleri became known as ‘lo smantellatore’ – the dismantler. Yet, Calleri remained hopeful about a return to the Filadelfia, a place, he said, where ‘rhetoric and reality coincide perfectly’.

In 1994 a Pro-Filadelfia Foundation was set up by Torino fan and ex-city-Mayor Diego Novelli (a life-long communist). More promises were made. ‘The project is OK, we now need to find the money’, said Novelli. The ‘new stadium’ would be very small (just 15,000 seats) and would be accompanied by a museum and a library. In 1995, fans were asked to ‘buy a brick’ for the new Filadelfia (for about thirty pounds each); wisely, only 400 fans did so. A new plan now provided for an even smaller stadium (down to 12,000 seats) that would only be used for training. The building site would open in ‘one year’s time’. In the same year Torino’s fans unveiled this banner: ‘The tragedy is not dying, but forgetting: save the Filadelfia’. Work was scheduled to start in 1996 and would be completed, Novelli claimed, well in time for the fiftieth anniversary of Superga.

In November 1998, the council declared that work on the new stadium would start ‘very soon’. Time went by. No building work began. Meanwhile one of Torino’s many ex-presidents, Gianmauro Borsano, who had taken the club to the brink of bankruptcy, was arrested. It emerged that he had more or less stolen fourteen thousand million lire from Torino. Another year passed but the site remained unchanged, if sadder and more overgrown. The club was sold – again – to Massimo Vidulich in March 1997 – a frontman for a mysterious group of Genovese financiers. ‘We are very interested in the rebirth of the Filadelfia,’ Vidulich told the fans, ‘we will never leave there, at any cost.’

Discussions already seemed to be pointing in another direction, with plans to move Torino back to the Comunale. In July 1997, in what was both a good and a bad sign, more of the old stadium was demolished, preparing the way, it was hoped, for a new project. Many old players and staff were close to tears and Franco Ossola, son of a Superga victim (his namesake), said, ‘I only had this field where I could feel that my father was alive, they are taking everything away from us.’ Part of the monument to Superga was removed, leaving an empty plinth. Cynicism soon set in. Torino fan and journalist Massimo Gramellini wrote that ‘the Egyptians took less time to complete the Pyramid of Cheops’. Meanwhile, as the team got worse and worse, Torino’s long-suffering fans unveiled a banner – directed at the players – which read: ‘Even in the last few games, you have been unworthy of this shirt’. Torino’s followers occupied themselves mainly with songs about the past – chanting about heroes from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

In 1998 the council announced that work would begin ‘soon’ on the new stadium which would be ready ‘in a little while’. The fans, tired of endless lack of action, were suspicious. ‘Politicians, Hands off the Filadelfia’, they scrawled on the ruins of the stadium. In October 1998, La Repubblica wrote that the Turin council ‘has obtained the necessary funds’ to build a stadium on the historic Filadelfia site. May 1999 – the emotional fiftieth anniversary of Superga – came and went, amidst some farcical scenes. That day was supposed to see the laying of the foundation stone of the ‘new’ stadium. But the building site had still not been authorized and no ceremony took place. Fans screamed ‘We want our Filadelfia back’ at the city Mayor, Torino fan Valentino Castellani. He replied, ‘So do I.’ Christian Vieri, who had played his youth football at the Filadelfia, said, ‘How sad it is to see it like this.’ A warped fan even built a ‘shrine’ to the Madonna of the Filadelfia on the site.

In 2000 Torino appointed its seventh president since Pianelli (the last president to win a championship with the club) resigned in 1982. The team was now the property of plastics manufacturer and notorious Juventus fan, Francesco Cimminelli. By then, most Torino fans had given up hope of a new Filadelfia. Logistical problems (the size of the site, its residential location), speculation and financial poverty had combined to kill off what seemed increasingly like a project built on romanticism. What was to happen to the historic site was open to question. It looked like it would probably be turned over to housing or shops, something which journalist Gramellini has disparagingly called a Supergamarket.

As if to torture the club’s loyal followers, yet another new project emerged in 2004, and was approved by the local council. Part of the old Filadelfia would now be made into a tiny new stadium, with just 2,200 seats. This ‘stadium of memory’ would be used for youth matches and friendlies, as well as first-team training. Torino followers were not impressed. Someone quipped that the minuscule stadium was an attempt to pass off a previous plastic model for the real thing. After all the past promises, false starts and plans, Torino fans were taking nothing for granted. The Winter Olympics in 2006 brought huge investment to the city, including the renewal of the crumbling Stadio Comunale (renamed as the Olympic stadium) where Juventus and Torino had once played. Both clubs returned there for the 2006–7 season. Torino fans preferred this stadium to the hated Delle Alpi, and by now many had given up hope of ever returning to the Filadelfia. As grass grew around the crumbling ruins, the dreams and myths associated with Il Grande Torino began to fade into nostalgia. Fewer and fewer living fans remembered that great team and the links with the past were more and more flimsy. Mazzola and his team-mates had not been forgotten – far from it – but they had become a mythical, softfocus memory, light years away from the wealth and rhythms of the contemporary game.³⁰