IL GRANDE TORINO

As always I am looking for inspiration for this blog and this morning, while chatting to a house guest about Italy, she is a fluent speaker and so is her husband, inevitably I turned the conversation to CALCIO and eventually into crowd control and graffitti. I mentioned the rivalry between Pisa and Livorno and the resultant scrawlings on walls all over the beautiful leaning tower city. Her interest was based on an experience trying to drive through an Italian city when the local football crowd was "turning out". Not a valuable experience.

She went onto mention Milan and the conversation quickly swung round to the 1949 Superga air disaster. On the 5th May, an Italian Airlines' Fiat 212, flying back from Lisbon after a friendly match against Benfica, carrying all the Milan team and officials got lost in fog and had a dodgy altimeter. The outcome was a crash landing into the retaining wall of the Basilica Superga which took the lives of all the players and many of the officials-31 in total. This will explian how influential the team was in World football.
https://fiveinmidfield.com/2011/05/04/gone-but-not-forgotten-%E2%80%93-il-grande-torino-and-the-tragedy-of-superga/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEuhGNtfJrw  This video gives a good coverage of the event and the losses.

The Torino team was a leading member of Serie A and had won five consecutive league titles in the 1940s and the Double. The Grande Torino was obliterated along with the heart of the Azzurri, the Italian national side. When the Italian FA sent its national squad to the Brazil World Cup in 1950, they went by boat!

Founded in the late 19th Century, the Torino club was made up from Swiss and English locals. The club ran Football and Cricket teams and by 1889 another club, Nobili Torino, was formed. In 1891 the two eventually merged to create Internazionale Torino. FC Torinese was set up in 1894 and in 1900 there was a handful of clubs leading to the National Championship which included in December 1906 the Foot-ball Club Torino. The rivalry at the time between Torino (very much an old school club) and Juventus (who were professionals) remains as strong today as it was when all this developing.

While football was developing popularity, the traditional game of Pallone dwindled (see also pallupugno). If you want to find out more about this game that involves a sort of "gloved" hand (actually a wooden cyclinder) and either an inflated ball or a very hard rubber ball, played a bit like real tennis or Fives, then have a look at this link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallone