60 Years on, Italian soccer club Torino still haunted by fatal Superga plane crash

Soccer club Torino haunted by 1949 plane crash

TURIN, Italy — Torino’s struggles at the bottom of Serie A have hardly been a surprise for the club’s long-suffering supporters, but relegation would be especially painful this year.

Monday marks the 60th anniversary of the Superga tragedy, the day Turin and Italy lost a team touted as one of the nation’s greatest ever.

At 5:05 p.m. on May 4, 1949, the aircraft carrying the Torino team back home from an exhibition in Lisbon crashed in foggy conditions into Superga Basilica on a hill overlooking Turin. All 31 people on board were killed, including the 18 players and two coaches.

The club has never again reached the heights of “Il Grande Torino.”

The city was devastated: more than 500,000 people lined the streets on the day of the funerals.

“I remember it very well, because I think all boys — or men — of my generation remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news,” veteran Gazzetta dello Sport journalist Rino Tommasi said.

“Americans of a certain generation remember where they were in two situations — Pearl Harbor and when JFK was assassinated,” the 75-year-old Tommasi said. “Since I’m a bit crazy for sports, I remember that I was in San Benedetto Del Tronto where I lived, trying to arrange a tennis game with a friend.”

At the time, Torino was leading the standings and on the brink of its fifth consecutive title. Two years earlier, Torino provided 10 of the players on the Italian national side for a match against Hungary, with goalkeeper Valerio Bacigalupo the only exception.

It was a team admired throughout the country, one that lit up Italy following defeat in World War II and years of fascist rule.

Captain and midfielder Valentino Mazzola was the heart of the team and, despite dying in the crash, his legacy lived on. His son Sandro helped Inter Milan win two European Cups in 1964 and 1965 and was part of the Italy team that reached the 1970 World Cup final.

At the Stadio Filadelfia, Torino had been unbeaten since 1943 — 93 matches — and coaches Egri Erbstein and Leslie Levesley were ahead of their time with an attacking 4-4-2 formation.

“When I started with Torino in the youth team we trained in Grande Torino’s stadium and we heard the stories of the great team that fell in 1949. That was 14 or 15 years afterward so the memories were still fresh,” recalled Renato Zaccarelli, who became club captain.

“There was one kit man who told us stories of Bacigalupo and Mazzola and this continued the tradition of ‘Il Grande Torino.’ You felt it at training and in the changing rooms. You had to walk through their tunnel and train on the field where they used to play.”

After the crash, the league awarded Torino the Serie A title and the club’s youth team played the final four matches. It wasn’t until 1976 that Torino, captained by Zaccarelli, lifted the championship again, a success that led to an emotional response from the club’s fans.

“The day after the (final) match there was a massive march when all the fans walked to Superga. It was all spontaneous and the team tried to go up to it, but there was such a line of people,” Zaccarelli said.

By then, the club had moved from its home at Stadio Filadelfia — first to the Stadio Comunale, in 1963, and then to Stadio delle Alpi, in 1990. Since 2006, Torino is back at the refurbished Comunale, now known as Stadio Olimpico, but many fans still dream of a return to Stadio Filadelfia.

“They could make it the training ground,” Zaccarelli said.

“For the fans it would be important to recover the place where the team played,” he said. “There are fans who have never seen anything of the ‘Grande Torino’ team, have only heard stories and it would be a place where they could go to understand the team.”

In recent years, along with the bouncing back and forth between Serie A and second division Serie B, the club has changed hands on numerous occasions and watched its best players leave, notably Gianluigi Lentini, who moved to AC Milan in 1992 for a then-world record fee of $19 million.

Along with the 1976 title, all the fans have had to cheer are three Italian Cup wins in 1968, 1971 and 1993.

The current team is one point and one place above the relegation zone. Torino has five matches remaining to guarantee its place in the top division.

“I hope they can save themselves from relegation,” Zaccarelli said, “because I think on the 60th anniversary of the Superga tragedy it would be a real shame if they get relegated.”

AP Sports Writer Andrew Dampf in Rome contributed to this report.