Torino fans revel in their rivals' suffering
HIGH up in the hills above Turin, shrouded by the Alps, is the basilica of Superga. It is an unremarkable building pockmarked with graffiti, but it is now a shrine to Il Grande Torino, the footballing masters wiped out in a plane crash in 1949. “Juventus have had this coming,” Marco Bagni said as he stood outside yesterday. “They deserve their pain.”
It is a view shared by many Torino fans as Juventus prepare for the verdict of the match-fixing trial in which the biggest club in Italy have stood centre stage. Demotion to Serie B would result in the fall from grace of another great Turin club, but relegation to Serie C may turn the Stadio delle Alpi into another memento mori.
In the Palazzo di Citta, a second Torino supporter gave his view. The mayor’s desk is surrounded by 17th-century paintings with gilt-edged frames and is home to a cigarette case bearing the images of the 1949 team.
Sergio Chiamparino delivered an alarming view of the crisis. “People say it is necessary for this to be a new start, a rebirth, but in three or four years there will be another scandal,” he said.
Having received a letter bomb from an anarchist group only last Friday, he knows that a high profile comes at a cost. “It’s like politics,” he said. “We had a huge scandal at the start of the 1990s, but politics and corruption are still entwined. With this scandal, people in the café and the market and at the match would say [Luciano] Moggi [the former Juventus general manager] was ‘the boss of the culture’. There was a feeling that something was not clean.”
He pointed out that Torino were relegated for faking financial guarantees only last year, sparking far more reaction than the present scandal has provoked. “We had a march through the city recently with 20,000 Juventus fans, but there was no violence and there was nobody daubing graffiti on walls against the judge,” the mayor said. “With Torino there was a lot of violence and slogans. If the judge condemns Juventus to Serie B, the supporters will not be so angry.”
Even among Juventus fans, the anger seems to be directed not so much at those who may have wronged the Old Lady, but at the prospective punishment.
Italian history is riven by scandals and the four fans sitting around a table in the headquarters of the Forza Juve Club on Via Sansovino were quick to point out the injustice of the justice system.
Antonio Held said: “We are exhausted from the gossip and the newspaper polemic. I cannot understand the level of hate against Juventus. Five members of Juventus won the World Cup on Sunday, but the attacks continue. Why? If we are relegated, it will be an opportunity. We can start again, with nobody accusing us of things from the past.”
Michele Terrone highlighted the case of AS Roma and the Rolexes in 2000. On that occasion the club president, Franco Sensi, gave two high-ranking refereeing officials £40,000 gold watches for Christmas. “Nothing happened then, there was no scandal, no big words in the newspapers,” Terrone said. In fact, the officials did not even give the watches back because they claimed that it would cause additional embarrassment.
As the tapped phone conversations involving Moggi and an official from the Italian football federation concerned referees, he had a point.
Indeed, the bribing of referees has been an endemic part of calcio for decades, as Allan Clarke, the former England striker, underlined when he recalled a 2-0 defeat by Italy in Turin in 1973. “Both goals were a good ten yards offside and after the game Alf Ramsey [the manager] found out that the referee and linesmen had been given brand new Fiat cars,” he said. “I’ll say no more.”
Juventus are very much the Manchester United of Italy, reviled for having a fan base that extends way beyond the city limits. Nicknamed gobbi — the hunchbacks — they are the butt of all jokes and many are wallowing in their misfortune, notwithstanding the pivotal roles of Fabio Cannavaro, Gianluigi Buffon, Gianluca Zambrotta et al in the World Cup triumph.
The Forza Juve Fans believe that those culpable should be punished and not the team, but they seem resigned to their fate. Didier Deschamps, the new coach, will face the media on Saturday, by which time the seven judges in Rome will have delivered their verdict.
His new Juventus team will play in the Stadio Olimpico next season, even though work on the redevelopment of the much-loathed Delle Alpi has been put on hold.
There is an acceptance of the inevitable in Turin. “The relationship between Juventus and Turin is not strong,” Chiamparino said. “Juventus are multinational. They are identified with Italy, not Turin.” The mayor has been given a T-shirt to prove it, rejoicing in Juventus’s possible fall to Serie C.
Up on the hill at Superga, Bagni no doubt wished that he had one, too. “We were robbed of a title and now it’s their turn,” he said, referring to the time Torino were stripped of the scudetto in 1927.
By a quirk of fate, that was because a Torino official had bribed a Juventus player before a derby match. Eighty years on and it perhaps not surprising that people are growing immune.
The Times
HIGH up in the hills above Turin, shrouded by the Alps, is the basilica of Superga. It is an unremarkable building pockmarked with graffiti, but it is now a shrine to Il Grande Torino, the footballing masters wiped out in a plane crash in 1949. “Juventus have had this coming,” Marco Bagni said as he stood outside yesterday. “They deserve their pain.”
It is a view shared by many Torino fans as Juventus prepare for the verdict of the match-fixing trial in which the biggest club in Italy have stood centre stage. Demotion to Serie B would result in the fall from grace of another great Turin club, but relegation to Serie C may turn the Stadio delle Alpi into another memento mori.
In the Palazzo di Citta, a second Torino supporter gave his view. The mayor’s desk is surrounded by 17th-century paintings with gilt-edged frames and is home to a cigarette case bearing the images of the 1949 team.
Sergio Chiamparino delivered an alarming view of the crisis. “People say it is necessary for this to be a new start, a rebirth, but in three or four years there will be another scandal,” he said.
Having received a letter bomb from an anarchist group only last Friday, he knows that a high profile comes at a cost. “It’s like politics,” he said. “We had a huge scandal at the start of the 1990s, but politics and corruption are still entwined. With this scandal, people in the café and the market and at the match would say [Luciano] Moggi [the former Juventus general manager] was ‘the boss of the culture’. There was a feeling that something was not clean.”
He pointed out that Torino were relegated for faking financial guarantees only last year, sparking far more reaction than the present scandal has provoked. “We had a march through the city recently with 20,000 Juventus fans, but there was no violence and there was nobody daubing graffiti on walls against the judge,” the mayor said. “With Torino there was a lot of violence and slogans. If the judge condemns Juventus to Serie B, the supporters will not be so angry.”
Even among Juventus fans, the anger seems to be directed not so much at those who may have wronged the Old Lady, but at the prospective punishment.
Italian history is riven by scandals and the four fans sitting around a table in the headquarters of the Forza Juve Club on Via Sansovino were quick to point out the injustice of the justice system.
Antonio Held said: “We are exhausted from the gossip and the newspaper polemic. I cannot understand the level of hate against Juventus. Five members of Juventus won the World Cup on Sunday, but the attacks continue. Why? If we are relegated, it will be an opportunity. We can start again, with nobody accusing us of things from the past.”
Michele Terrone highlighted the case of AS Roma and the Rolexes in 2000. On that occasion the club president, Franco Sensi, gave two high-ranking refereeing officials £40,000 gold watches for Christmas. “Nothing happened then, there was no scandal, no big words in the newspapers,” Terrone said. In fact, the officials did not even give the watches back because they claimed that it would cause additional embarrassment.
As the tapped phone conversations involving Moggi and an official from the Italian football federation concerned referees, he had a point.
Indeed, the bribing of referees has been an endemic part of calcio for decades, as Allan Clarke, the former England striker, underlined when he recalled a 2-0 defeat by Italy in Turin in 1973. “Both goals were a good ten yards offside and after the game Alf Ramsey [the manager] found out that the referee and linesmen had been given brand new Fiat cars,” he said. “I’ll say no more.”
Juventus are very much the Manchester United of Italy, reviled for having a fan base that extends way beyond the city limits. Nicknamed gobbi — the hunchbacks — they are the butt of all jokes and many are wallowing in their misfortune, notwithstanding the pivotal roles of Fabio Cannavaro, Gianluigi Buffon, Gianluca Zambrotta et al in the World Cup triumph.
The Forza Juve Fans believe that those culpable should be punished and not the team, but they seem resigned to their fate. Didier Deschamps, the new coach, will face the media on Saturday, by which time the seven judges in Rome will have delivered their verdict.
His new Juventus team will play in the Stadio Olimpico next season, even though work on the redevelopment of the much-loathed Delle Alpi has been put on hold.
There is an acceptance of the inevitable in Turin. “The relationship between Juventus and Turin is not strong,” Chiamparino said. “Juventus are multinational. They are identified with Italy, not Turin.” The mayor has been given a T-shirt to prove it, rejoicing in Juventus’s possible fall to Serie C.
Up on the hill at Superga, Bagni no doubt wished that he had one, too. “We were robbed of a title and now it’s their turn,” he said, referring to the time Torino were stripped of the scudetto in 1927.
By a quirk of fate, that was because a Torino official had bribed a Juventus player before a derby match. Eighty years on and it perhaps not surprising that people are growing immune.
The Times
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