On February 6, 1958, a British European Airways plane carrying players from the English team Manchester United crashed at Munich Airport. On this day, we decided to remember five plane crashes in which athletes died.
In the 40s of the 20th century, the Turin team provided real competition to their city neighbors from Juventus. Moreover, Torino was one of the best Italian teams of the post-war era, especially after winning the national championship three times (1946, 1947, 1948). In total, taking into account the break during the war period, Torino won the Scudetto five times. At the time of the tragedy, the club was again leading the championship by four points.
The tragedy occurred on May 4, 1949, when the team was returning home from Portugal, where they were defeated by Lisbon Benfica with a score of 3:4. On board the Fiat G.212CP aircraft were 18 Torino football players, as well as the club management and several journalists - a total of 31 people. At the same time, in Barcelona, where the plane with the Torino players was landing to refuel, the Turin football players met and talked with their championship rivals - the Milan players.
The plane crashed very close to Torino. Due to heavy fog, the pilots lost orientation in space and crashed into the fence of the Catholic Basilica of Superga, after which the airliner turned sharply and fell down at high speed. All people on board died. The only surviving Torino player from that period was Lauro Toma, who did not fly with the team to Lisbon due to an injury.
The eminent British club suffered much smaller losses compared to Torino. More than half a century ago, on February 6, 1958, a British European Airways plane carrying players from the English team Manchester United crashed at Munich Airport. On board the airliner were the club's players, Manchester United management, as well as fans and journalists - only 23 out of 44 people.
The plane crash with the Mancunians occurred on the way from Belgrade, where the team played a match against the local Red Star in the Champions League. The plane refueled in Munich and then tried to take off, but this was prevented by increased vibrations in the left engine. The second attempt also ended in failure. The third attempt to take off was prevented by the onset of snowfall, due to which the airliner lost speed. The left wing of the plane hit a nearby house.
21 people on board died instantly, the rest lost consciousness. Subsequently, the pilot was named as the culprit of the disaster, but ten years after the disaster he was acquitted due to the fact that due to the snowfall that began at the time of the third takeoff, a large amount of snow formed at the end of the runway, which caused the decrease in the speed of the airliner.
US Figure Skating Team February 15, 1961
In 1961, 18 of the best U.S. figure skaters were scheduled to compete in the World Championships, which were to be held in Prague. On February 15, the athletes, along with coaches, officials and relatives, boarded the new Boeing 707. The plane took off from Kennedy Airport to Brussels, where the US team had a transfer to Prague.
A few hours later, the airliner crashed in a wooded area near the village of Berg, near the Belgian capital. All 72 people on board were killed, as well as one person on the ground. The 1961 World Championships in Prague were cancelled. Among the victims of the tragedy were Maribel Vinson-Owen, the coach of the American team, and her daughters Lawrence and Maribel, members of the US figure skating team.
Investigators found no signs of problems on board. Why, at an altitude of less than 300 meters, the Boeing engines suddenly increased power and the already extended landing gear retracted back is still unknown. The plane crash dealt a heavy blow to American figure skating; only in 1968 did new champions emerge in the United States.
In Soviet times, Pakhtakor was an extremely strong team in the All-Union Championship. However, on August 11, 1979, events occurred that are written in black letters in the history of the club. The Tu-134 plane, in which the team was flying to Minsk for the next USSR championship match with Dynamo Minsk, collided with a similar plane at an altitude of 8400 meters above the Ukrainian Dneprodzerzhinsk. One of the planes was heading from Chelyabinsk to Chisinau, the other from Tashkent to Minsk.
All 178 people on both planes died (94 in the Moldavian and 84 in the Belarusian). Among the dead were 17 Pakhtakor players.
Despite the tragedy, the Soviet leadership decided to help the team by transferring players from other clubs, as well as maintaining a “registration” in the USSR Major League, regardless of performance results, for a period of three years.
On September 7, 2011, a Yak-42 plane took off from Tunoshna airport, with Lokomotiv HC players on board. They were heading to the capital of Belarus, where the next day a game was scheduled with the local Dynamo. This was supposed to be the first match of the Yaroslavl team in the 2011-2012 Kontinental Hockey League season.
During takeoff, the airliner was unable to gain a safe altitude, crashed into the antenna of a lighthouse located behind the runway, and fell near the airport. There were 45 people on board the plane, of whom only crew member Alexander Sizov survived. Doctors fought for several days for the life of hockey player Alexander Galimov, who miraculously escaped from the rubble, but his injuries were initially incompatible with life.
Immediately after the plane crash, the KHL management suspended the championship for several days; no one thought about the further fate of the team at that moment. Soon it was decided that Lokomotiv would return to the KHL only in the 2012/13 season, and the team would skip the current season.
Later, the IAC named the direct cause of the disaster as involuntary pressing of the brake pedals during the take-off run of the aircraft, made by the aircraft commander or co-pilot. It was never possible to determine which of them made the fatal mistake.
During their golden age, Torino scored more than 100 goals per season. The only one of them, the club leader, Valentino Mazzola, should not have scored... This goal became fatal for the club and for the entire Italian football. On April 24, 1949 in Bari, shortly before the final whistle, Mazzola equalized the score (1:1). Thanks to this goal, Torino became unattainable for its opponents five rounds before the end of the Italian championship. This championship was the 4th in a row for the club. Club president Ferruccio Novo wanted to reward the team with a trip abroad. The very next day he agreed on a friendly match in Lisbon with Benfica...
Thursday, May 4, 1949, turned out to be gloomy and cloudy in Turin. Heavy lead clouds hung over the city, seemingly collecting all the moisture from the Alps. Around four in the afternoon the sky completely darkened. The outlines of the 167-meter Antonelli Tower disappeared in the darkness, it began to rain heavily, and it became autumn-like cold, like in November. People tried not to go out into the street idle, and those who were still at work frantically looked at their watches - they wanted to quickly return home and take refuge in the warmth. And only at the headquarters of the Torino football club did no one show any visible haste. Here they patiently waited for news of the team's return from Portugal, where they had played a friendly match with Benfica the day before. Given the nature of the weather, in the morning we sent a club bus to Milan airport in case landing in Turin turned out to be impossible. It had already struck five, but no messages had been received. The languid expectation grew into anxiety, and at the beginning of five, terrible rumors spread throughout the city: in the suburbs of Turin, where the famous Superga Cathedral with the tombs of the Savoyard monarchs is located, some plane crashed.
The club employees and carabinieri who rushed to the scene of the incident in cars were literally amazed by what they saw: the tail number of the plane that crashed directly into the earthen foundation of the cathedral, and the scattered fragments of football equipment left no doubt about the identity of the dead; this was confirmed by the results of subsequent identification: almost the entire main team of Torino, the undisputed champion of post-war Italy, of which ten players were members of the national team.
Due to bad weather, the pilot did not notice that he had lowered the plane too low towards the landing strip. And instead, the car crashed into the Superga hill located near the city, on which stands the famous Baroque temple.
The Great Torino was gone: along with the substitutes, the disaster claimed the lives of eighteen players. Their fate was shared by the coaching staff: Egri-Erbstein, Livesley, Cortina; service personnel, Turin journalists accompanying the team and four pilots - a total of 31 people.
From that team, only Lauro Toma survived, who due to injury did not fly to the game in Lisbon, as well as reserve goalkeeper Renato Gandolfi and young pupil Luigi Gandolfi, who also did not fly to the match. The president of the club, Ferruccio Novo, who created this super team, also remained in Turin at that time.
The funeral took place on May 6, 1949, and was attended by about a million people. Turin was mentally with its symbols of a bygone era.
The 1948/49 season was completed by the guys from the Torino youth corps. They won all their remaining matches and secured the Scudetto for Torino, but it was a bitter triumph. On May 26, 1949, a charity match was organized at the Stadio Communale, the proceeds of which went to the relatives of the victims. River Plate played against the Torino Emblematic Team, which consisted of eleven brilliant players who were borrowed from all the teams in the league and wore garnet shirts. The match ended in a 2:2 draw. The formation of the team after this terrible tragedy was very difficult. Ferruccio Novo decided to build a new team based on the talented youth from the Primavera club. In addition, several targeted acquisitions were made. The 1950/51 season marked the beginning of a rather painful period in the club's history - the Bulls were saved from relegation only in the last round. The same thing happened the next year. And only in the 1975-1976 season did the club again win the Italian championship. Torino became the first club in Italy whose fans organized an official fan club. In 1951, "Gruppo Sostenitori Granata" was born - the first fans' club in Italy.
“If it weren’t for Superga, Uruguay and Germany would have one less world title,” says Oreste Comoglio. When Torino's rise began, he was 22 years old. Now 89, he is still a passionate fan of his team.
First, the heroes were lost at Superga, and then their cradle, the Philadelphia Stadium, was lost. Since the 60s, they stopped playing on it and left it unattended, and in 1997 it was completely demolished.
Comoglio himself is no longer strong enough, but his grandchildren came out to protest when the regional government planned to build a press center for the 2006 Winter Olympics on the site of Philadelphia Stadium. “Here we were invincible until 1949,” Jacopo Rosatelli proudly declares. With his mother and grandfather Oreste Comoglio, they visit the Superga hill regularly on the anniversary of the plane crash. “We lay flowers and weep,” says the young 24-year-old. Their family is not alone. On May 4, 2003, when Torino relegated to Serie B on the anniversary of the tragedy, 50,000 people came to honor Valentino Mazzola's team.
Eternal memory to those who died...
"Torino", 1949
The Torino football club of the 1940s was a super club of the Italian championship. From 1946 to 1948, he won gold medals at the national championship three times. On May 3, 1949, a match took place in Portugal between the Torino and Benfica teams, in which the Italian team lost to the Portuguese club with a score of 3:4. The next day, the Torino team took off from Lisbon on a three-engine Fiat G.212CP aircraft. On board there were 18 football players, crew, club managers and journalists, a total of 31 people.
The plane made an intermediate stop in Barcelona to refuel, where the Torino players met their rival friends from Milan. The Milanese were transferring on a flight to Madrid and were the last to see the Turin residents alive. At about five o'clock in the evening, when there was very little left to the city of Turin, the plane entered an area of increased fog, which caused the pilot to lose orientation in space. The plane's left wing touched the fence of the Superga basilica built on a hill, it spun around and crashed into the ground at high speed. All passengers on board died. There was a stroke of luck here for one of the players - Lauro Toma stayed at home and did not fly to the match with Benfica due to injury.
The Torino players posthumously became champions of Italy.
Air Force, 1950
On January 7, 1950, the Air Force hockey team created by Vasily Stalin crashed near Koltsovo airport near Sverdlovsk. In difficult weather conditions (blizzard, strong wind), the plane crashed. On board were 11 hockey players, a doctor and a massage therapist from the Air Force team, who were heading to Chelyabinsk for a match with the local Dzerzhinets, as well as 6 crew members. All 19 people died. By a lucky coincidence, the future captain of the USSR national football and hockey teams, Vsevolod Bobrov, was late for this plane. There are different versions of this delay: evil tongues said that the great athlete drank too much, and Bobrov himself nodded at his brother, who set the alarm clock incorrectly.
Manchester United, 1958
On February 6, 1958, not only England, but the whole world was shocked by the tragedy that happened to one of the best teams in the world - Manchester United, nicknamed the "Busby Babes". Football players, coaches, several fans and journalists were returning from a European Cup match in Belgrade. The plane of the British company British European Airways was refueling in Munich.
Pilots James Thain and Kenneth Rayment made two takeoff attempts, but canceled both due to increased vibrations. Not wanting to fall too far behind schedule, Captain Thain refused to stay in Munich overnight, opting to make a third takeoff attempt. It turned out to be fatal. The plane crashed through a fence at the end of the runway and crashed into a residential building. In this disaster, 23 people out of 44 on board died. The wounded were taken to a Munich hospital.
By the way, 22-year-old Whelan Liam, climbing the ramp before takeoff, pointed out to his comrades the heavy snowfall and said: “We will probably die, but I’m ready for this.” And Bobby Charlton, who survived this disaster, became the world champion 8 years later. 10 years after the disaster, Thain was completely acquitted.
US Figure Skating Team, 1961
On February 15, 1961, a Sabena Boeing 707 flying from JFK Airport in New York crashed while landing in the Belgian capital Brussels. All 72 people were killed, as well as one person on the ground. Among the dead was the US figure skating team (34 athletes), which was heading to the World Championships in Prague. This plane crash led to the cancellation of the World Figure Skating Championships as a sign of mourning for the victims.
"Pakhtakor", 1979
This is one of the worst disasters in aviation history. That day at 13.35 in the sky in the area Dneprodzerzhinsk At an altitude of 8400 meters, two Aeroflot Tu-134As collided, killing all 178 people on board.
Among the dead were 17 members of the Uzbek football club Pakhtakor, including 14 players, an administrator, a second coach and a doctor. The team flew from Tashkent to Minsk. After the plane crash, the club's roster was strengthened with players from other teams. Also, by the decision of the USSR Football Federation, Pakhtakor was guaranteed a place in the major league for three years, regardless of the final result.
Holland national football team, 1989
On June 7, 1989, a Surinam Airways DC-8-62 crashed during landing in the Paramaribo area. 176 people died in the incident, 11 people survived. Among the dead were 14 Dutch football players of Surinamese origin, a coach, and the mother and sister of one of the athletes. They were flying to Suriname to participate in a tournament with three clubs. The plane took off from Amsterdam on June 6 at 23.25 local time. During the four-hour flight there were no emergency situations on board. During the landing approach, the pilot team received a weather report about favorable weather conditions at the arrival airport. During landing, the pilots made a mistake, as a result of which, at an altitude of 25 meters, the right wing of the plane caught a tree.
By the way, many Dutch players were not allowed to fly due to preparations for the upcoming season. Among the survivors are Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard, Aron Winter, Brian Roy and some others.
Zambia national football team, 1993
On April 27, 1993, a plane crashed 500 meters off the coast of the city of Libreville, the capital of Gabon. On board was most of the Zambian national football team, en route to a 1994 World Cup qualifying match against Senegal. All 30 people on board (crew, 18 players, coach and maintenance staff) died in the disaster. As a result, the weakened team took only second place in Group 2 of the final stage of the qualifying matches.
During the first stop in Brazzaville, problems were discovered with the left engine, but the pilot decided to continue the flight. A few minutes after takeoff from Libreville, the left engine caught fire and stopped. The pilot stopped the right engine, the plane completely lost thrust and fell into the water about 500 meters from the coast.
"Lokomotiv", 2011
Exactly two years ago a terrible tragedy occurred. The Lokomotiv hockey team from Yaroslavl flew from Tunoshna airport to Minsk, where they were supposed to play with the local Dynamo. The Yak-42 plane crashed after flying only 2.5 kilometers after takeoff. According to another version, the plane did not have enough runway. There were 45 people on board the liner: 37 passengers (crew and escort) and 8 crew members. 43 people died on the spot.
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Lokomotiv hockey players who died in the plane crash [by name]. On September 7, the Yaroslavl hockey team “Lokomotiv” was involved in a plane crash. The Yak-42 plane, on which the Yaroslavl hockey players were flying to Minsk, where they were supposed to play with the local Dynamo, fell from a height of 500 meters immediately after takeoff. In total there were 45 people on board, 37 of them were hockey players. Antonina PANOVA
The whole country prayed for the health of hockey player Alexander Galimov, but a miracle did not happen; on September 12, he died at the Vishnevsky Institute of Surgery. Only flight engineer Alexander Sizov was able to survive this terrible disaster. By chance, two people who were supposed to go to Minsk along with everyone else were not on board. Forward Maxim Zyuzyakin and goalkeeper coach Jorma Valtonen were left in Yaroslavl to work with the youth team.
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Reconstruction of the Yak-42 plane crash. On September 7, the Yaroslavl hockey team “Lokomotiv” was involved in a plane crash. The Yak-42 plane, on which the Yaroslavl hockey players were flying to Minsk, where they were supposed to play with the local Dynamo, fell from a height of 500 meters immediately after takeoff. In total there were 45 people on board, of which 37 were hockey players.
5 more major disasters:
Hockey
On April 1, 1970, an Aeroflot An-24B crashed in the Novosibirsk region, killing 45 people, including a youth hockey team that was flying to a game in the Golden Puck tournament.
Basketball
On August 24, 2008, an ITEK AIR Boeing 737-219 Advanced crashed. Among the passengers was the Kyrgyz youth basketball team, heading to Tehran to participate in competitions. Ten crew members were killed, seven survived.
Rugby
On October 13, 1972, a Fairchild Hiller FH-227 aircraft » The Uruguayan Air Force, operating a flight from Montevideo to Santiago de Chile, crashed into a mountain slope in the Chilean Andes at an altitude of 4000 meters. There were 45 passengers on board, including the Old Christians Club rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay. Most of the passengers died. There was no food on board. As a result, 16 people rescued on December 26 survived. One of the documented cases of cannibalism in the modern world. The events are also shown in the film "Alive" (1993).
American football
On November 14, 1970, near Tri-State Airport in Ceredo, Flight 932's collision with a mountain kills 75 people, including 37 members of the Marshall University team.
Motorsport
Death of the Embassy Hill Racing Formula 1 team - On November 29, 1975, Graham Hill's Embassy Hill Racing team, returning from the Paul Ricard circuit, France, in a six-seater Piper Aztec aircraft, crashed in England while trying to make an emergency landing in the conditions heavy fog. Almost the entire crew died in this plane crash. At the helm was Graham Hill himself, along with him on the plane were Tony Brize, a promising British racer, team manager Ray Brimble, mechanics Tony Alcock and Terry Richards, and designer Andy Smallman.
In total there were 81 people on board the ship. According to the latest data, six people survived. Among the survivors were the names of Chapecoense footballers Alan Ruschel, Marcos Danilo and Jackson Folman, as well as flight stewardess Jimena Suarez, aircraft technician Erwin Tumeri and Brazilian journalist Rafael Henzel.
This is not the first time that entire football teams have died in plane crashes.
The death of "Pakhtakor"
On August 11, 1979, two Tu-134A airliners collided in the sky over Dneprodzerzhinsk (Ukraine). One of them operated a flight from Chelyabinsk to Chisinau, and the second from Tashkent to Minsk. As a result of the disaster, all 178 people on both sides were killed, including 17 players of the Uzbek football team Pakhtakor. The team flew to Minsk for a game with local Dynamo.
The cause of the tragedy was called an error by air traffic controllers, who were unable to separate two planes at an altitude of 8,400 meters in very poor visibility. There were other versions. According to one of them, one of the planes could have been shot down. But this version has not been confirmed.
After the tragedy, Pakhtakor was restored by the entire USSR. 15 teams sent their players to Tashkent. The team finished that season in ninth place in the Major League. The USSR Sports Committee decided that, regardless of the results, Pakhtakor would maintain its registration in the Major League for three years. The team took advantage of this privilege only once in 1981, when it took last place in the USSR Championship.
Death of Torino
In post-war Italy, Torino was rightly called a super club. In 1946, 1947 and 1948, the team from Turin became national champions. She also led in the 1948/1949 season and was close to winning the fourth Scudetto.
In 1949, Torino was invited to a friendly match in Portugal, where on May 3 it met Lisbon's Benfica and lost 3:4. The day after the match, the team flew home on a three-engine Fiat G.212CP aircraft. On board were 18 team players, club leaders and several journalists. A total of 31 people.
When there was very little left to Turin, the plane entered an area of increased fog. The pilot lost his orientation and the plane's wing hit the fence built on the hill of the Basilica of Superga. The plane spun around and hit the ground at high speed. All passengers on board died.
Nine players from the Italian national team played in that Torino squad, including its captain, the famous Valentino Mazzola.
© AP Photo/Massimo Pinca
Shoes and a ball found on the Superga hill, where Torino's plane crashed in 1949, are on display at the Turin Museum
A few days later, on the ill-fated hill, the president of the Italian Football Federation raised the trophy - regardless of further results, Torino was declared the champion of Italy ahead of schedule. The remaining four rounds were played out by the youth team.
As a sign of respect, Fiorentina, Genoa, Sampdoria and Palermo also fielded their youth team for the game. Torino won all four matches and won the Italian title for the fourth time in a row. All 18 dead players posthumously became champions of Italy in 1949.
More than a million people took to the streets of Turin to bury the team. And the football players were so shocked that a year later, to the World Cup in Brazil, they chose to travel by ship rather than by plane.
Death of Manchester United
On February 6, 1958, the victims of a plane crash at Munich airport were Manchester United football players - The Busby Babes, as coach Matt Busby's players were called because of their youth.
©AP Photo/
The team was returning from Belgrade, where in a match with Red Star they reached the semi-finals of the European Champions Cup of the 1957/1958 season and made a planned stop in Munich.
After refueling the Airspeed AS.57 Ambassador, the pilots made two takeoff attempts, but canceled both due to engine problems. By the time of the third attempt to take off, heavy snow had begun to fall in Munich, resulting in a large amount of slush near the end of the runway. Having got into this mess during acceleration, the plane lost speed and, breaking through the barrier of the runway, crashed into a house standing nearby.
Of the 44 people on board, 23 died (21 on the spot and two later in hospital), including eight football players and two coaches. Also, eight journalists were killed in the disaster.
With the surviving players (including the future Manchester United legend Sir Bobby Charlton), as well as the reserves involved, Busby managed to reach the FA Cup final that season, where he lost to Bolton 0:2.
10 years after the tragedy in Munich, still with the same Charlton in the lineup and under the leadership of the same Busby, Manchester United became the first English club to win the European Champions Cup.
Death of the Zambian national team
On April 27, 1993, about half a kilometer from Libreville, the capital of Gabon, a plane carrying the Zambian national football team crashed. The team was heading to Dakar, where the 1994 World Cup qualifying match against the Senegal team was to take place.
© AP Photo/Francois Mori
As a result of the tragedy, 18 players of the Zambian national team, the head coach and support staff were killed. In total there were 30 people on board.
An official investigation determined that the cause of the crash was the pilot's improper actions during an engine fire. A few minutes after taking off from Libreville, the plane's left engine caught fire and stopped. The pilot turned off the right engine, after which the plane completely lost thrust and crashed into the water.
Now in the capital of Piedmont there is only one football team playing in the Italian Serie A - this is the familiar Juventus. But this Italian record holder for champion titles won for a long time was only the second team in the industrial capital of Italy. In the 40s, a completely different club shone on Italian football fields, now wandering between the second and first echelons beyond the Apennines. But one sad day a disaster occurred.
On May 4, 1949, thick fog shrouded Turin when the Fiat G-212 three-screw passenger airliner was landing. On board was the full Torino team, returning just after a friendly match from Lisbon. The Italian championship was still in full swing, but for the team returning from almost a tourist trip, this circumstance played absolutely no role. Already five rounds before the end of the season, Torino secured victory in the national championship, the so-called “Scudetto”. This title was already the fifth in a row and was the last for almost three decades.
Due to bad weather, the pilot did not notice that he had lowered the plane too low towards the landing strip. And instead, the car crashed into the Superga hill located near the city, on which stands the famous Baroque temple. None of the 18 players on the football team survived the tragedy. “The Great Torino,” as this remarkable composition is still called by the tifosi, became a true legend thanks to this disaster.
Two days after the plane crashed, the President of the Italian Football Federation, Ottorino Barassi, raised the championship cup into the sky at the scene of his death. Several hundred thousand fans attended this ceremony. They said goodbye to the best team of the 40s - in Italy, in Europe, maybe in the world. The ceremony was attended by all Italian teams and many athletes and football officials from around the world. Closing the procession behind the funeral hearse was the inconsolable president of the Novo club, the man who created this super team.
In Turin itself, the balance of power was extremely clear. Juventus at that time could not even be seriously considered as a full-fledged rival. The heart of the city beat not in black and white, but in wine-red, which in Italian, and now in Russian, is called “pomegranate”.
If a club deserves the name of a well-performing home, then that is exactly what Torino of the forties was in the full sense of the word. For six years in a row, the team did not lose a single match at its Philadelphia stadium. In the 1947-1948 season, the gap between Milan, which took second place in the Italian championship, and Torino was 17 points (!). This overwhelming superiority was reflected in the composition of the Italian national team. By the end of the 40s, the Azzurra squadra was nothing more than Torino, dressed in blue T-shirts. With the fall of the Fiat G-212 airliner, a piece of post-war Italy also perished.
“If it weren’t for Superga, Uruguay and Germany would have one less world title,” says Oreste Comoglio. When Torino's rise began, he was 22 years old. Now 89, he is still a passionate fan of his team. It was under him, in 1938, that leather manufacturer Ferruccio Novo was elected president of the sports society. Novo developed a four-year plan, in the best of true socialism, to create a competitive team. The first step in his first-class acquisition policy was his purchase of Romeo Menti and Guglielmo Gabetto in the summer of 1941.
These players were the backbone of the “great Torino”. However, at first they were not enough to forever relegate the eternal rival Juventus to the background. Torino has always traditionally attached much more importance to the dispute about the city's first team than to performances in the Italian football championship. Therefore, the city derby lost in December 1941 was significant for the transformation into a super club.
As a consequence of the defeat to Juventus, President Novo decided to rebuild the entire system of the game. Having clearly formulated it, he immediately gave instructions to put it into practice. At that time it was something completely new for Italy. Coach Ernest Egri Erbstein was not particularly inspired by the august intervention of the club boss, but he had no choice but to take the lead and run to carry out the order. His “grenade” guys at the beginning of 1942 lined up in the “WM” system, better known in our country as “double-ve”. This game pattern was completely unknown on the Apennine "boot". Three midfielders and two back defenders formed the letter "W", and they were entrusted with all the defensive work. The second half of the team, lining up in the letter "M", concentrated entirely on attacking the other team's goal. By applying this unusual football concept, Torino immediately became vice-champion. The signings of Ezio Loic and Valentino Mazzola for the following year turned a very good team into an invincible one. Mazzola reigned supreme in the center, with midfielder Loïc doing all the grunt work for him. In the 1942-1943 season, Torino again won the Scudetto for the first time since 1927. After a break caused by hostilities in Italy, the club won all the other Italian championships of the 40s.
Nobody is more respected for this unbeaten run than Valentino Mazzola. When “the great Torino” had a bad day or even lost, he would defiantly roll up the sleeves of his T-shirt by the middle of the second half, legends say. “This was a sign for an attack,” Comoglio continues his story. He calls this ritual “ten minutes of Torino.” He especially fondly remembers the game with the Roman “Lazio” in 1948: “Torino” lost 0:3. Then Mazzola got down to business seriously and after ten minutes we were already leading 4:3.” . The fact that Torino are now struggling to make it into Serie A of Italian football, while Juventus are constantly playing in the Champions League, is a “historic mistake” for Comoglio. He doesn’t care at all that this mistake has now become the usual course of things. If there is no success within a short time, then they require an explanation for a long time.
First, the heroes were lost at Superga, and then their cradle, the Philadelphia Stadium, was lost. Since the 60s, they stopped playing on it and left it unattended, and in 1997 it was completely demolished. Comoglio himself no longer has enough strength, but his grandchildren went out to protest when the regional government planned to build a press center for the 2006 Winter Olympics “in the holy place” where Philadelphia Stadium was located. “The Myth of Torino” directly connected to this stadium. Here, until 1949, we were invincible," says Jacopo Rosatelli proudly. With his mother and grandfather Oreste Comoglio, they visit the Superga hill regularly on the anniversary of the plane crash. "We lay flowers and weep," says this young 24-year-old. Their the family is not alone.On May 4, 2003, when Torino relegated to Serie B of the Italian championship on the anniversary of the tragedy, 50,000 people came to honor Valentino Mazzola's team.
During his golden age, “the great Torino” scored more than 100 goals per season. The only one of them Mazzola would not need to score. On April 24, 1949, shortly before the final whistle, he equalized (1:1) in Bari. Having received this point, “Torino” already five rounds before the end of the Italian championship became unattainable for their rivals. Club president Ferruccio Novo wanted to reward the team with a trip abroad. The very next day he agreed on a friendly match in Lisbon...
Not everyone flew there - for various reasons the famous Sauro Toma, Giuliano and Gandolfi stayed at home (all three due to injuries), Nicolo Carosio avoided the trip because his child was preparing to be baptized, and finally, President Novo could not join the team because that he suffered from bronchitis. They stayed in the capital of Portugal for four days, rested, had fun, played a match with Benfica (in honor of Jose Ferreira, who was bidding farewell to football), losing it 3:4, and then boarded the plane, never to get off it.
31 people died in the disaster: players Valerio Bacigalupo, Guglielmo Gabetto, Valentino Mazzola, Aldo and Dino Ballarin, Ruggero Grava, Romeo Menti, Giuseppe Grezza, Piero Operto, Milo Bongiorni, Ezio Loic, Franco Ossola, Eusebio Castigliano, Virgilio Maroso, Mario Rigamonti , Rubens Fadini, Danilo Martelli and Giulio Schubert; coaches Egri Erbstein and Leslie Livesley, managers Arnaldo Agnizetta and Ippolito Civalleri, masseur Ottavio Corina, three journalists, the match organizer and four crew members.
REFERENCE
In the entire history of football, similar disasters have happened three more times:
February 6, 1958 Manchester United, returning from Belgrade after the return match of the quarter-final of the European Cup against Red Star (the English played 3:3 and advanced to the semi-finals due to a 2:1 home victory), crashed in an accident when the pilot, having refueled in Munich , could not lift the plane. Eight players, three club employees and 12 other people were killed. Head coach Matt Busby and nine players managed to survive. True, two of them: Jackie Blanchflower and Johnny Berry were forced to say goodbye to football due to injuries. The real hero was goalkeeper Harry Gregg, who pulled his teammates from the burning plane: Blanchflower, the club's leading scorer Denis Violita and then 20-year-old Bobby Charlton, as well as a young woman with a small child. Subsequently, Busby would create a new team, but of those who burned on the Munich runway, only Charlton and Bill Foulkes would win the 1958 Champions Cup.
August 11, 1979 Tashkent "Pakhtakor" was heading to Minsk for a match of the USSR football championship against the local "Dynamo". In the sky over Dneprodzerzhinsk, due to the fault of Kharkov air traffic controllers, the team’s plane collided with a plane that was transporting children from the Artek pioneer camp to Chelyabinsk. All 178 people on both ships (including 14 players, a coach, an administrator and a team doctor) were killed. The information was classified for a week, but the fact of the death of the football team forced the incident to be made public. One of the guilty dispatchers (a 21-year-old trainee who gave the wrong command) subsequently hanged himself, the other (who was “distracted” from the process) was sentenced to 15 years in prison. To create a new team from other teams participating in the Major League, players were provided, which became the basis for the revival.
April 27, 1993 The Zambian national football team (by the way, one of the strongest on the continent at that time), 18 people, became victims of a plane crash into the sea. The cause of the disaster was fire. Until now, football in this country has not recovered from such a blow.
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