TORINO 1941-49

The Torino team which dominated Italian football in the 1940s was one of the most talented and successful in European football history, but also one of the most tragic. Torino were a complete team, a solid defence built around goalkeeper Valerio Bacigalupo and defenders such as Aldo Ballarin and Giuseppe Grezar supporting talented forwards Valentino Mazzola, Franco Ossola and Guglielmo Gabetto. These players swept all before them in the immediate post-war years, winning four league titles in a row to add to the last title before the war, before their entire squad was tragically wiped out in a plane crash in 1949.

Torino's run of success began with the runners-up position in Serie A in 1942, which laid the foundations for a league and cup double the following year. A first league championship in fifteen years was sealed in the final match of the 1942-43 season thanks to a late Mazzola goal, and just weeks later a 4-0 win over Venezia in the last Italian Cup final to be held until 1958 completed the double. Torino's squad would then lose two years of the prime of their careers to the Second World War, but the team did finish as runners-up in an unofficial Italian Championship in 1944.

It was a strengthened Torino team that resumed official competition in 1945, and began to dominate Italian football. A crucial 1-0 win over local rivals and fellow championship challengers Juventus in the penultimate game of the 1945-46 season gave Torino a chane to clinch another title, and they responded by thrashing Pro Livorno 9-1 to take the title. The following two season saw Torino run away with the Serie A title, finishing ten points clear in 1947 and sixteen points ahead of the chasing pack in 1948. No-one could get near to a championship challenge, and it appeared that 1948-49 would see more of the same.

Torino were moving clear at the top of Serie A as they entered May 1949, and were about to clinch their fifth official title in a row, stretching back to before the war. On 3rd May, they played a friendly match in Lisbon against Benfica, losing narrowly by four goals to three, before returning to Turin for the culmination of the league season. However, as their plane approached the city, it crashed into the Superga Basilica on a hill on the edge of Turin, with the city shrouded in thick fog. Everyone on the plane was killed, including eighteen first team players and the entire coaching staff.

The city of Turin was devastated, going into a period of mourning that lasted throughout the period of the victims' funerals. The Italian Football Federation immediately declared that Torino should be recognised as league champions, despite not having yet clinched the title. They played their last four matches with a reserve team, their opponents also fielding reserve teams as an act of solidarity. Torino went into decline as they attempted to rebuild their team and their club, and would not win the league title again until 1976. They went into further decline as the 20th Century came to an end, spending several seasons outside Serie A, never having got close to repeating the great triumphs of the brilliant but tragic team of the 1940s.