Fabrizio Turco
Fabrizio Turco was interviewed exclusively by TorinoGranata.it. Turco is a journalist for La Repubblica and a writer. We talked with him about Turin and the latest book he wrote together with Enzo Savasta “The day after. The Great Torino after the Great Torino” (Bradipolibri) with a preface by Mauro Berruto, Italian volleyball coach and politician, and a postscript by Steve Della Casa, film critic and artistic director, both Toro fans.
With four matches remaining in the championship, Torino’s season has already ended with a mid-table finish which leaves many regrets. What didn’t work?
“I don’t particularly agree in the sense that there are regrets if you want to see them, but mid-table seems to me to be the right position for a team that is in that position: nothing more and nothing less. On the other hand, if in the last six months Torino has been 10th in the standings for the vast majority of weeks, as it is today, this is evidently its position. And therefore, probably, there are those who have seen and see Torino’s potential as being too much higher than it actually is: the team had a mid-table championship and is mid-table this year, last year and also year before, while previously there had been two seasons in which probably at least one of Torino would have more than deserved relegation. In these last decades history repeats itself so, in a certain sense, I am amazed by the amazement.”
In the summer, yet another revolution: the coach will leave, one or more players who have a market will be sold, someone else will arrive. What do you expect?
“I expect everything to change so that nothing changes.”
So it doesn’t matter who the new coach will be?
“He will certainly have it in his daily work, I have no doubt that a trained technician will certainly arrive who will then have to deal with the problems of Turin today. I wonder how long it will take the new coach to metabolize the problems he will encounter when he arrives in Turin.”
Are the problems the same as the previous coaches or others?
“Every football club has its own problems and Torino has its own. The problems are also inherent to the characteristics of people. Each person approaching another can encounter certain problems and it is clear that it also depends on the feeling that is created between people, this is obvious. Certainly a very top-down club like the Granata club creates problems that are often difficult to resolve and which all previous coaches have had to face.”
This is the week leading up to May 4th and on Saturday there will be many events aimed at commemorating the death of Grande Torino in the Superga tragedy, a winning team with a not rich ownership behind it, but capable of giving great satisfaction to the fans and capable of establishing itself in the panorama of football, not only Italian.
“We are talking about another world, another Italy, another Turin understood as a city, another football, other people. I believe that every Torino fan must experience this moment intimately, which is absolutely special. I wouldn’t want it to be a little too exploited left and right for personal interests, being, as I said, an intimate moment. May 4th, especially for those who were there that day, even though unfortunately since 75 years have passed there are fewer and fewer people who are witnesses of what happened, it is a moment of sadness that everyone experiences in their own way and as far as I’m concerned it brings to mind other moments of mourning and death and therefore the sadness is amplified, but there is one thing that I find wonderful and which is very Taurus in spirit: the drama is not dying, but forgetting and as friends say, all volunteers who have done and they do a commendable job, the Grande Torino Museum and the Granata Legend will not be forgotten and therefore will not die.”
Speaking of May 4th, the book written by her and Savasta “The day after” has just been released. The Grande Torino after the Grande Torino” published by Bradipolibri. The book fits not only in the context of wanting to remember, but also in that of wanting to understand what happened after that day. Can you explain to us how the book was born?
“We started reflecting, designing, thinking and writing this book 8 years ago and we were told that for the 70th anniversary of the Superga tragedy we wouldn’t have been able to finish it, because in three years we wouldn’t have been able to write everything what we wanted, but 8 of us yes. So for the 75th it could have been done. The objective was to address a topic that objectively no one had addressed until now. There are many books on Grande Torino, many of which end with May 4th. We had written a book on Philadelphia (in 2016 “Philadelphia – History of a territory and its stadium” published by Bradipolibri, ed.) which covered everything that existed before Philadelphia and this time we wanted to make a book on Grande Torino , but about everything that came after. “The day after” therefore begins on May 4th with the accident, the funeral, the desperation of a country and the entire world and then the investigations, the trials, the parliamentary questions, the reasons why the plane crashed and everything what happened next. The family events, for example, of the Mazzola family, absolutely and surprisingly new. And speaking of things that first of all surprised me and Savasta, what happened from 1952 until 1965 at the level of the Granata society. They were very difficult years from an economic point of view because Torino was completely devastated by this catastrophe and therefore the club needed a lot of help to be able to carry on.”
Who helped Torino after the Superga tragedy?
“The help also arrived in a surprising way, even from those who were not expected.”
Did this aid then influence the following years and is there a long wave that can reach today?
“Not until today because the extraordinary work of Orfeo Pianelli intervened in the middle and therefore since mid-1965, a date not mentioned by chance, Torino has been free, it no longer has any type of constraints. At the time, Pianelli had become the owner of the club for three years and since there were no longer any constraints, he abruptly resolved the last attempt, in particular by Gianni Agnelli but also by his brother Umberto, to merge the two city teams, which had been attempted in a very significant way in the mid-1950s. The thing was happening again in the mid-60s, but this time Pianelli responded sparingly and it ended there. So Torino goes back to being the Bull that slowly raises its head, wins the Italian Cup, is robbed of a scudetto, wins another Italian Cup and then the championship and this is the revolution of 1976″.
In the book there are unpublished things about the Mazzola family and others, but is there something that you discovered that has a strong and profound meaning for you?
“It’s difficult to choose one, but the whole Mazzola affair touched me a lot, what happened after Superga was very touching and certainly the fifteen years between 1952 and ’65 because I didn’t expect in the slightest to find such documentation, which was very surprising, and I can reveal that the structure of the book was completed and then a year and a few months ago we discovered other documents and we started working intensely again, enriching the text with the central part of the documents which is all linked to this decidedly post period Superga, but which derives from what happened on 4 May 1949 because if that day the plane had not crashed into the embankment of the Basilica there certainly would not have been this devastating fifteen-year period between the 50s and 60s”.
Without giving everything away, but is there anything you can reveal about the book?
“Three things. The first, linked to the Museo del Toro, which I find shocking every time I go there, when you enter you expect to find t-shirts, socks, shin guards, shorts and balls used by Valentino Mazzola, Gabetto, Maroso and companions and you find them , but what always makes me shed tears is smelling the scent of camphor contained in the jar found among other things in the briefcase of the masseur Osvaldo Cortina and precisely linked to Cortina there is a crazy and wonderful story that concerns the air hostess, Niny De Santis, who should have normally taken his seat on the aircraft and who instead left it right in Cortina so that he could take the plane to go to Lisbon, where the friendly match with Benfica would take place, and not make the journey by train. This woman’s life deserves a book in and of itself and not just a chapter.
The second is about Július Schubert who was the only one who on the day of the funeral, May 6th, the date chosen to present the book to Superga, whose coffin was not accompanied by any family member because no one came from Hungary and also no one claimed the coffin which still rests with its captain Valentino and other companions in the Monumental cemetery of Turin. Schubert had no family and this situation is the face of a war that had just ended.
The third, related to the discussion of the war, is the feeling that Savasta and I had very strongly and how much the wounds and scars of the war that had just ended affected that post-accident. In the sense that there was a relationship with death that was much closer than it is today and that there was almost an attempt to remove this tragedy as quickly as possible and in fact the funeral took place exactly 48 hours after the accident despite the devastation that was found at the crash site with president Vittorio Pozzo trying in some way to help recompose the bodies of the players and other people who had perished. This really gives the feeling that they wanted to archive as quickly as possible another reason for desperation and drama at a time when, after the war, there was probably the desire to go back to living and smiling again without always having to cry, something that the two wars in twenty years had entailed”.
“The day after. The Grande Torino after the Grande Torino” will be presented on Monday 6 May at 6.30 pm in the Peterlin room of the Basilica of Supergamunicipal road to the Basilica of Superga 73 a Turinand subsequently Wednesday 8 May at 4pm in the Chamber of Deputies in Palazzo MontecitorioMonte Citorio square a Rome.
The book is on sale in bookstores since yesterday and online on Amazon and other commercial sites.
