There are so many "if onlys". If only the plane carrying the great Torino team had flown from Lisbon to the bigger airport in Milan, instead of the little one in Turin.
If only Mazzola, Torino's "Captain Valentino", had stayed home to nurse his flu, as the early rumours after the crash said he had.
If only the Torino players had listened to the inner voices that had been warning them for years not to fly. They used to go around Turin by bike, but were almost alone among Italian teams of the day in flying to most away games. It added to their aura of modernity.
After their friendly match in Lisbon they flew back to Italy. As the Fiat G212 plane approached a very foggy Turin, the pilot radioed to the ground staff that all was fine, and asked them to make him a coffee. Five minutes later he had crashed into the Superga church on a mountain overlooking Turin.
All 31 people on board, including the "Il Grande Torino" side, one of the most dominant teams in history, were dead. Sixty years on, "Superga" remains one of the core stories of Italian football.
The crash happened at 5.05pm. Seven minutes later, writes the historian John Foot in his magisterial Calcio: A History of Italian Football: "A car screeched to a halt near to the restaurant which stood on a small square next to the Basilica.
"The driver said he needed to use the phone, urgently.
"The journalist he spoke to at the national press agency refused to believe his story."
Il Grande Torino were just about to clinch their fifth straight Italian title. A farmer recognised the remains of one of the two Ballarin brothers, by the red team shirt he wore even when off duty. Vittorio Pozzo, journalist and former manager of Italy, had to identify the other bodies, though some were beyond recognition.
"The Torino team is no more," Pozzo wrote in a passage for his newspaper La Stampa that same evening.
"It has disappeared, it is burnt, it has exploded? the team died in action, like a group of shock troops in the war who left their trenches and never came back."
For one game in 1947, Pozzo had picked a record 10 of them in his Italy squad. A sole "Toro" player survived: Sauro Toma had stayed home with a knee injury. Wandering blithely through Turin that afternoon, he came across a knot of people discussing the disaster. Someone began shouting, "Toma is alive! Toma is alive!"
Everyone looked at him in wonderment. "But," asks Toma in his book Me grand Turin, one of countless works inspired by Superga, "Can you be alive if you carry death in your heart?"
Toma, who is now 83, still lives in Turin. He briefly tried to resume his career, but gave up in 1950, aged only 25. "I was worth nothing," he later explained, "because I was always thinking of my old mates. It ate energy."
Italian football took well over a decade to recover. AC Milan's victory in the European Cup in 1963 was the country's first major prize since the World Cup of 1938.
In 1964 and 1965 Mazzola's son Sandro, who was six when he lost his father, won two European Cups with Inter. He dedicated them to Captain Valentino.
Torino never recovered at all. The club became a living monument to Superga, stricken, getting relegated, once even going bankrupt. They were always unlucky.
Soon after the disaster, Italy's "economic miracle" began. Flocks of poor southern peasants took the train north and many ended up in Turin making cars for Fiat.
Just then, the Juventus club had overtaken their stricken local rivals. Naturally most of the southern migrants began to follow Juve. They also transmitted the passion to their relatives down south.
Juve grew into the best supported club in Italy. But in Italian memory, Il Grande Torino and Captain Valentino keep winning.
skuper@thenational.ae
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Avengers: Endgame
Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Josh Brolin
4/5 stars
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Earth under attack: Cosmic impacts throughout history
- 4.5 billion years ago: Mars-sized object smashes into the newly-formed Earth, creating debris that coalesces to form the Moon
- 66 million years ago: 10km-wide asteroid crashes into the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out over 70 per cent of living species – including the dinosaurs.
- 50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater
- 1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.
- 1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
- 1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.
-2013: 10,000-tonne meteor burns up over the southern Urals region of Russia, releasing a pressure blast and flash that left over 1600 people injured.
The specs: 2019 Subaru Forester
Price, base: Dh105,900 (Premium); Dh115,900 (Sport)
Engine: 2.5-litre four-cylinder
Transmission: Continuously variable transmission
Power: 182hp @ 5,800rpm
Torque: 239Nm @ 4,400rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 8.1L / 100km (estimated)
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
If you go
Where to stay: Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Centre has unparalleled views of the Indian River. Alligators can be spotted from hotel room balconies, as can several rocket launch sites. The hotel also boasts cool space-themed decor.
When to go: Florida is best experienced during the winter months, from November to May, before the humidity kicks in.
How to get there: Emirates currently flies from Dubai to Orlando five times a week.
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
On sale: Available for preorder now
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 154bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option
Price: From Dh79,600
On sale: Now
Veil (Object Lessons)
Rafia Zakaria
Bloomsbury Academic
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Electoral College Victory
Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate.
Popular Vote Tally
The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.
Disclaimer
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Stars: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Lesley Manville
Rating: 4/5
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Brief scores:
Everton 2
Walcott 21', Sigurdsson 51'
Tottenham 6
Son 27', 61', Alli 35', Kane 42', 74', Eriksen 48'
Man of the Match: Son Heung-min (Tottenham Hotspur)
World record transfers
1. Kylian Mbappe - to Real Madrid in 2017/18 - €180 million (Dh770.4m - if a deal goes through)
2. Paul Pogba - to Manchester United in 2016/17 - €105m
3. Gareth Bale - to Real Madrid in 2013/14 - €101m
4. Cristiano Ronaldo - to Real Madrid in 2009/10 - €94m
5. Gonzalo Higuain - to Juventus in 2016/17 - €90m
6. Neymar - to Barcelona in 2013/14 - €88.2m
7. Romelu Lukaku - to Manchester United in 2017/18 - €84.7m
8. Luis Suarez - to Barcelona in 2014/15 - €81.72m
9. Angel di Maria - to Manchester United in 2014/15 - €75m
10. James Rodriguez - to Real Madrid in 2014/15 - €75m
Citadel: Honey Bunny first episode
Directors: Raj & DK
Stars: Varun Dhawan, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Kashvi Majmundar, Kay Kay Menon
Rating: 4/5
Business Insights
- Canada and Mexico are significant energy suppliers to the US, providing the majority of oil and natural gas imports
- The introduction of tariffs could hinder the US's clean energy initiatives by raising input costs for materials like nickel
- US domestic suppliers might benefit from higher prices, but overall oil consumption is expected to decrease due to elevated costs
