Rites and rituals have always served man to learn something about himself and identify his place in the world or, at least, an area to which he belongs. A rite consolidates a community and carries out memory maintenance work, the most indispensable mechanism of civil life. This is the reason why today, seventy-five years later, the tragedy of Superga is remembered, the men of Grande Torino are celebrated and those whom fate brought together in misfortune, like our founder and first director Renato Casalbore, which had given birth to Tuttosport only four years earlier in that touching post-war ferment in which all dreams seemed achievable.
If anyone still wonders about the power of the May 4; onl how it can involve a progressively higher number of people than the Greater Turin they have only heard; on the reason that pushes all opponents to the most respectful and sincere of bows; here, the answers must be sought in the meanings and effects of the May 4th ritual, which go beyond reminding Granata fans of the uniqueness of their faith.
The years of the country in rebirth
Commemorating the Superga tragedy teaches us to honor the strongest without envy and conspiracy theoriesputs respect back at the top of the pyramid of feelings and tells us stories of sporting men and not rock star sportsmen, in short it takes us back to the Years of Grande Torino, when the country was reborn, also thanks to sport, under other auspices and with other values. Values that today we find more and more often in history, less and less in the news. The nostalgia that pervades the May 4th ritual has its roots there, in the stories of grandparents to their grandchildren who discover one of the most beautiful fairy tales in the world; the generation that explores the world with Tik Tok videos, enchanted by feelings that cannot travel on digital tracks.
The memory of Grande Torino
Rites are useful, they are indeed useful, to avoid forgetting, to pass the baton year after year. And today 75 have passed without the myth of Grande Torino having been tarnished by time and it is important, in the rhetorical thrill, don’t forget what that team was, letting yourself be swallowed up by the insidious vortex of comparisons, one might say the real Madrid Of Zidane, the United Of Ferguson or the Barcelona Of Guardiola. It was a team that had the best or one of the top three in the world in every position. It was a team led by one of the greatest footballers of all time, penalized in encyclopedic classifications by the fact that few have seen it and many have only heard of it. And maybe even rightly so because Valentino Mazzola, the man who only by rolling up his sleeves terrified his opponent and thrilled his own, is in a category apart, like his companions. He inherited his sash Alessandro Good morning, boy who grew up in Bull and scholar of Great Turin, a sign that those roots continue to produce fruit, despite the many branches withered by mediocrity which like a parasite has affected the Granata family tree.
