In the World Cup play-offs in the early hours of this morning, Italy scored a 32-foot shot without success, and was eventually dramatically eliminated by North Macedonian striker Trajkovski, thus missing this year's World Cup in Qatar. Italy's defeat without warning was a lament.
Italy have missed the knockout rounds in four consecutive World Cups since winning the 2006 World Cup (group exits in 2010 and 2014, and missed the regular round in 2018 and 2022). This is reminiscent of the Blue Army, which successfully defended the title in the 3rd World Cup, and failed to qualify for the knockout rounds in the next 5 World Cups.
The Supega air disaster of 1949 had a profound impact on this.
Friends familiar with the history of Italian football will not be unfamiliar with the Supega air disaster, "Football under the Sky" has also produced a related feature film on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Supega air disaster, as one of the most mournful air disasters in the history of football, what impact has it had on Italian football?
The "Turin Team" suffered a tragic air crash
On May 4, 1949, the most dominant team in the Apennines, the Turin Gods, returned home in a domestically produced Fiat G212 after playing in portugal in the Friendly Latin Cup, but as the plane approached Turin, the weather suddenly changed and thunderstorms added, and the visibility in the air was less than 50 meters. The airport tower issued an emergency call to the plane: "The clouds are dense, the rain is heavy, the visibility is low, there are clouds at a low altitude of 500 meters, you are in the center of the minefield, please note." ”
However, bad weather, coupled with dashboard failures, prevented pilots from properly controlling the Fiat G212. A minute or two later, the pilot tried to land again, and when he had just avoided a cloud, he realized that what appeared in front of him was the Supega Mountain on the outskirts of Turin, 670 meters above sea level, and the pilot was powerless because of the speed. So the plane crashed headlong into a church on Mount Supega, and with a loud bang, all 31 people on the plane, including 18 players and 2 coaches of the Turin Bulls, were killed.
Before the tragedy, Turin ranked first in the league, and after the remaining four league rounds, Turin could only send youth teams to compete, while opponents Genoa, Palermo, Sampdoria and Fiorentina also sent youth teams to show respect, and as a result, the Turin youth team won all four games, helping Turin to defend the Serie A title and complete the five-consecutive Serie A championship feat.
How strong is this Serie A "five-game winning" team?
When World War II was in full swing in 1939, Ferruccio Novo, a 42-year-old Italian entrepreneur, was commissioned to become president of the Turin team at a time of crisis. Although Turin's foundation was not weak at that time, and they finished second in the league in the 1938-39 season, Ferruccio Novo really led the team to the all-time high.
At that time, Ferruccio Novo and his brother Mario jointly managed a leather factory, and when Ferruccio Novo became president of Turin, he simply gave Mario full authority over the family business and devoted himself to the management of the club.
Why is Ferruccio so passionate about club Turin? Because he liked to play football since he was a child, and at the age of 16, he entered the youth team of Turin, but unfortunately he was not able to play with limited talent. Although he has been away from football since then, he has always loved the "Bulls" in his heart, and when the right opportunity comes, he can finally release his love and show his skills.
in Franco Ossola
Under Novo's long and hands-on inspection and negotiation, Franco Ossola, Pietro Ferrares and Mente and other offensive players have joined the team. In particular, the club signed Juve super goalscorer Guglielmo Gabeto for 330,000 lire in the summer of 1941, and in the summer of 1942, with a record transfer fee of 1.25 million lire plus the signing rights of two players, the club successfully won the competition against Juventus, signing the super genius Valentino Mazzola. This, coupled with the talented right midfielder Leuk, also joined the team in 1942, giving the Turin team a fantastic squad.
in Mazzola
(Gaberto (center), Mazzola (right))
You can even think of Mazzola, Gabbetto and Leuk as real Madrid's Di Stefano + Puskas + Hento, and the Turin trio does have the strength to destroy the decay on the offensive end, the three of them entered the national team in the same year in 1942 and became the core main force, and won countless championships for the team at the club.
In the 1942-43 Serie A season, Turin won the Serie A championship after 15 years, and then the 1943-1945 two seasons, because of the reasons of World War II, did not complete the tournament, although Spezia won the honor of the wartime championship in 1944, but this was not counted in the official championship honor book of Serie A, so after 1945-1949 Turin won four consecutive championships, counting the 1943 championship, counting the five consecutive Serie A championships.
It is worth mentioning that Turin was able to keep its team members alive when the warriors of World War II were fierce, thanks to the Turin car giant Fiat, the Agnelli family's company that controlled another club in Turin, Juventus, and protected the Turin club during World War II. At that time, Turin cooperated with Fiat, the team became "Turin Fiat", and the players became workers working for Fiat enterprises, which saved the players from going to the front line and experiencing the ravages of war.
So in the end, Turin completely preserved the strength of the team and dominated Serie A after World War II.
The invincible Turin players in the domestic league naturally became the backbone of the Italian national team, and in the Game of Italy against Hungary in May 1947, the starting players of the Blues were actually 10 from the "Bulls", which was more than Bayern stopped at Germany and Evergrande was more than the national football team.
in Rengeler
In this match, Hungary's two-time European Golden Boot winners Gyula Zsengellér and Puskas both started the game, and in the end Italy won 3-2 against Hungary, and the Turin players scored three goals: Gaberto scored twice, and Leuk scored in the 89th minute.
How fierce was this Turin team in the league? In serie A in 1946–47, they scored a record 104 goals in 38 league games, Mazzola scored 29 goals and won the League Golden Boot, gaberto scored 19 goals to finish fourth in the league top scorers list (he scored 20 goals in the 1935–36 league season and won the Silver Boot).
In the 1947–48 Serie A season, they set a new league scoring record the previous year, with Turin scoring as many as 125 goals in 40 games, averaging 3.13 goals per game. On the top scorers list, Mazzola ranks second with 25 goals, Gaberto ranks third with 23 goals, and Leuk scores 16 goals as 12th. Two others scored in double figures: Mente scored 14 and midfielder Danilo Mattelli scored 11. Left winger Ossola and centre-forward Fabian also scored nine goals.
To this day, the 125 goals set by the "Turin Gods" are still the team's goal record in a single season in Serie A. The "Bulls" had the offensive ability to fight with Real Madrid under Mourinho (121 goals in the league in 2011-12) and Dream Three Barca.
Let's take a look at the goalscoring stats of the Turin team's core front:
Ferrares (who escaped the air disaster by joining Novara in the summer of 1948) scored a total of 140 goals in Serie A, scoring 55 goals in 168 appearances during his time in Turin, with a goal efficiency of 0.33.
When Mente died at the age of 29, Serie A scored a total of 87 goals, and during his time in Turin, he scored 53 goals in 131 Serie A appearances, with a goal efficiency of 0.4.
in Leuk
Leuke scored a total of 84 goals in Serie A when he died at the age of 29, scoring 62 goals in 160 Serie A appearances during his time in Turin, with a goal efficiency of 0.39.
Ossola died at the age of 27 and scored 61 goals in 122 Serie A appearances for Torino, scoring 0.5 goals.
When Valentino Mazzola died at the age of 30, Serie A scored a total of 109 goals, and during his time in Turin, he scored 97 goals in 170 Serie A appearances, with a goal efficiency of 0.57.
At the time of his death at the age of 33, Guglielmo Gaberto scored a total of 180 goals in Serie A, scoring 95 goals in 193 appearances during his time in Turin, with a goal efficiency of 0.49.
If these six people were present at the same time, the average number of goals per game in Serie A would have reached 2.68, which is still excluding other players, and you can imagine how fierce the gunfire of the "God Team" was at that time.
In serie A in the post-God era, chain defense gradually replaced offensive football as mainstream
Before the Supega air disaster, the Serie A champions averaged more than 2 goals per game in most cases, but after the attacking Italian football, the mainstream tactics gradually changed.
Inter beat Juventus to the title in 1952-53, when they scored just 46 goals in 34 games, 27 goals less than second-place Juventus, and they conceded only 24. Fiorentina won the title by 12 points in 1955-56, scoring 59 goals in 34 games and conceding just 20. These two teams, although they scored few goals, relied on a strong defensive system to win the league championship.
The changes in the scene of the championship team are all due to the transformation of the mainstream tactical system.
In the 1930s, austrian Rapán added goal latch and scavenger roles to the stadium in Switzerland, pioneering the classical chain defensive tactics. In the 1940s Viani led Salenitana to a similar tactic in Serie B, with some success. After the Supega air disaster, chain defensive displays gradually became the mainstream tactics in Italian football.
in Forney
Inter played eight games 1-0 and four 0-0 in the 1952–53 season, but they still won the title. Maradei, former chief writer of The Milano Sport, said: "At that time, the media sharply criticized them, lorenci, Skogron and Nersz were full of stars, but they were too concerned about defense and dead. It was completely revolutionary: if you think about it, the Serie A champions often scored around 100 goals at the time. Inter Milan, led by Alfredo Foni, has changed the original impression of chain defense as "the right of the weak".
The Rise of Chain Defense at the time is also described in The Inverted Pyramid: "Variations of the main theme sprung up, such as the 1956 Serie A champion Fiorentina. Coach Bernantini was a central defender abandoned by national team coach Pozzo, he arranged for left forward Segato to play free man, left winger Preni retreated as a "striker", and left infielder Montori filled the vacancy left by Purini, effectively becoming an additional center forward. Maybe it's not very popular, but the paradigm of Italian football has taken shape. Inter are the most famous practitioners of chain defense, but it is the red half of Milan city that first shows the power of chain defense to other European countries, thanks to the talented coach Nereo Rocco. ”
(Herrera and Rocco)
In the 1950s he experimented with improved chain defences in Tristarna, Padua and Turin, and eventually carried it forward in the 1960s when he coached AC Milan, winning two Champions League titles for AC Milan. On the Inter Milan side, Argentine coach Helenio Herrera also ushered in the era of great internationalism, Jonathan Wilson said in "Inverted Pyramid": "Herrera claims that he was not influenced by Lapán, he had this idea when he played football, he was independent thinking and invented the scavenger." Indisputably, Herrera became the godfather of chain defense, thin and tall, disciplined, and a personified image of chain defense. ”
Italy's top clubs rely on a chain defense system to win league and Champions League titles, and other clubs in the country have followed suit. For example, in the 2016-07 season, Conte relied on the three-centre-back system to lead Chelsea to win the Premier League, and by the beginning of the 2017-18 season, teams such as Manchester City and Arsenal have also begun to try the three-centre-back formation, after all, the head coach, as a high-off rate profession, is worth learning and trying for tactics that have been proven to be feasible in the present.
The team of gods died, and the three northern powers rose
Because of the appropriate manager's change of advanced tactics, coupled with the sudden "bad luck" of the league banba, the top three in the north, which has been suppressed by Turin for many years, has risen. Prior to 1949, AC Milan had experienced "dark forty years", in addition to winning three league titles in the 1900s. Juventus and Inter Milan each led the way in the 1930s, with the former winning five Serie A titles in 10 years, while the latter also scored three titles.
Turin and Milan, as the two major cities in Italy, occupy a unique advantage in terms of geographical location, political inclination and economic strength, after the lack of the domination of the Turin gods, Juventus regained the sharpness of dominating the Apennines in the 1930s, Inter Milan rushed away the traces left by Mussolini, AC Milan got rid of the long-term downturn, and in the three seasons after the Supega air crash, Juventus, Inter Milan and AC Milan always ranked in the top three of the standings. Since then, they have slowly established a situation of competition for the top three in Italian football.
Before the Supega crash, Juventus last won serie A in 1934–35, and in the fifteen years following the crash, they won the Serie A titles in five seasons: 1949–50, 1951–52, 1957–58, 1959–60 and 1960–61.
The last time the International team won the title was in 1939–40, seventeen years after the Supega crash, when they won five Serie A titles in 1952–53, 1953–54, 1962–63, 1964–65 and 1965–66.
The same is true of Milan. Their last title was in the 1907 season, and since then they have won the trophy five times in the 1950–51, 1954–55, 1956–57, 1958–59 and 1961–62 league games.
In the 17 seasons after the Supega crash, Juventus, Inter Milan and AC Milan divided 15 of the league titles, and since then the pattern of the northern three finalists has officially taken shape.
Although the northern top three gradually rose to dominate Serie A, the Italian national team in the post-Bull era took 20 years to revive.
As champions of the last two World Cups before World War II, 1934 and 1938, Italy did not qualify once and exited four times from the first World Cup (1950) to the five World Cups in 1966 after World War II. Until the 1968 European Championship and the 1970 World Cup, the Blues won the championship and runner-up respectively, announcing the return of Italy to the stage of the world's top teams.
The Turin team has not yet been revived, and the loss of two great talents is regrettable
So far from the Supega air crash, Turin has won only one Serie A title in 1975-76, when the team's strikers Paolo Pulici and Francesco Graziani scored 21 goals and 15 goals respectively to win the league Golden Boot and Silver Boot.
(Graziani and Pulic)
Zkamille once told me: "Pulic is a typical small center scorer who was often seen in Italy before the 1990s, good at running position + catching fighters, and he is physically stronger than the average player of the same type." Graziani is a strong, fast, impactful guerrilla striker. ”
With two top scorers, Turin remained highly competitive in the two seasons that followed, with 1976-77 trailing Juve by just one point in second place, Graziani scoring 21 goals to become the League Golden Boot and Pulic with 16 goals to finish fourth in the top scorer list. Later in the 1977-78 season, Turin finished tied for second place in Serie A, and pulic and Graziani's names can still be seen on the top scorer list.
However, with the re-liberalization of foreign aid restrictions in Serie A in 1980 after a gap of 14 years, the "Small World Cup" gradually formed, the Turin team was not economically dominant, not only was it inferior in the competition for foreign aid, the two major Golden Boot scorers Graziani and Pulic were no longer young and left the team in the summer of 1981 and 1982 respectively, and they could no longer compete for the championship.
In addition, the loss of two players is quite a pity for the Bulls.
in Lorenzi
The first is Sandro Mazzola, the son of Valentino Mazzola, the offensive core of the "Turin Team", who was not yet 7 years old when the crash occurred. Since then, Valentino's friend, Inter Milan player Benito Lorenzi, has taken on the task of tapping the football talents of the two brothers, Sandro and Ferruccio, who led the two brothers to the Inter Milan academy.
Sandro perfectly inherited his father's football talent, his exquisite ball control skills and scoring ability under the guidance of Meazza, and eventually he became a member of the Inter Milan first team, playing the role of the core of the midfield in the era of the big international that Herrera pioneered, winning 4 Serie A titles, 2 Champions League titles and 1 European Championship, in addition to winning the Serie A Golden Boot and the Champions League Golden Boot as the core frontcourt.
Then there was Gigi Meroni, who was born a year later than Sandro Mazzola, lost his father at a young age (his father died at the age of 2), nicknamed "Maroon Butterfly", a talented winger with his brilliant dribbling skills, his rebellious deeds off the pitch, his love of painting and his artistic and Beatle-style hairstyle, which fans and the media at the time regarded him as the George Best of Italy.
If you look at Meroni's great video on YouTube, you'll be amazed by his football talent.
Meroni joined Turin in 1964 for a sky-high transfer fee of 300 million lira, where he reached the pinnacle of his career: in 1966 he joined the Italian national team, scored a brilliant shot against Inter Milan in 1967, and broke Herrera's three-year home unbeaten golden body.
However, Gigi-Meroni's fate is even worse than Best's. On 15 October 1967, in the team's 4–2 win over Sampdoria, Meroni was sent off with a red card, and shortly after the game ended, he recklessly crossed the road and was hit by a car, thus dying at the age of 24.
The Turin team thus lost the core of the team's wing for the next 5-10 years.
If Meroni hadn't been killed in the crash, he would have played with the national team at the 1968 European Championships and the 1970 World Cup. Sandro Mazzola, who was in his current year, had a certain credit as a core member of the Italian team to win the European Championship and the World Cup AFC Champions League for the team. If his father Valentino had been in the Blues in 1950, they would not have been out of the 1950 World Cup group.
The Bulls see no hope of returning to the top
The Turin team had a chance to return to the top in the late 1970s, but was always suppressed by city rivals Juventus. In the 1990s, even with the addition of strong players such as Franciscoli, Abedi Bailey, Andrea Silenzi and Giero Riztli, they still could not stand out in the world's most competitive league at that time.
In 1996, 2003 and 2009, Turin underwent three relegations in 13 years. The 2013-14 homegrown doubles Inmobile and Cherch were dazzling, but they were quickly poached. And now the team's biggest player, the main center Belotti, has experienced injuries in recent years, his condition is not stable, and he may leave the team this summer.
In the current Serie A standings, Torino is only 11th.
(Artilio Romero)
Attilio Romero, a 19-year-old who drove a Fiat 124 Coupé sport sedan into Merone in 1967 and was a Fan of Turin, was acquitted of manslaughter.
Dramatically, 33 years later, in 2000, he became the president of the Turin team, but he was not good at driving and managed the club. In 2005, Turin went bankrupt under his leadership. Romero has since been indicted by the Courts of Turin on charges of bankruptcy of documents, fraud against the Italian Football Federation, misappropriation of sports credit and violation of the Bills Act of 2000. In 2008, he was sentenced to two years and six months in prison.
Football is so similar to movies and life, from beginning to end, every stage may be inadvertently implanted and grown by drama.
The main body of this article was written before the World Cup play-off in Italy was released. (Supine Braces/Qiu Yixi)