Valentino Mazzola
Footballer (1919-1949), captain of the five-title Grande Torino side, who died with the team in the Superga air disaster.
Valentino Mazzola (Cassano d'Adda, 26 January 1919 – Superga, 4 May 1949) was an Italian footballer, an inside forward and captain of Grande Torino, the team that won five consecutive league titles and was almost entirely wiped out in the Superga air disaster.[1][2] To granata fans he has remained "the Captain by definition, the one with a capital C", as the Turin press put it in 2026.[3]
From Cassano d'Adda to Alfa Romeo
Born into a modest family near Milan, he did not finish primary school: as a boy he was a baker's errand boy and later a worker in the rope-making department of the Linificio e Canapinificio Nazionale. In his village he was nicknamed "Tulèn" and excelled at every sport; he captained the eleven of the Gruppo Sportivo Tresoldi.[1] In August 1938, spotted at a trial by Mario Magnozzi, he was signed as a right winger by Dopolavoro Alfa Romeo of Milan, then in Serie C.[1] According to Sky Sport, that same year he could have joined Milan, but chose Alfa Romeo instead: in his diary he explained that he preferred a steady job to a footballer's wage, so that idleness would not spoil his passion for the game.[4]
Venezia and Novo's call
In 1939 he left for military service in the Navy at Venice. According to an account by Sky Sport, he showed up for his trial with the lagoon club barefoot, so as not to ruin the only pair of boots he owned.[4] Having joined the club, he made his Serie A debut as a starter on 31 March 1940 in Rome, away to Lazio.[1][2] In the 1940-41 season he scored 9 goals and won the Coppa Italia.[1][3]
On 31 May 1942 his transfer to Torino, under president Ferruccio Novo, was completed together with that of his teammate Ezio Loik: according to the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani the fee was 1,200,000 lire, according to Toro.it 1,300,000.[1][3] Juventus had also pursued him, but Mazzola had made Torino his preferred destination.[1] A few months earlier, on 5 April 1942, he had made his debut for the national team against Croatia (4-0); with the Azzurri he collected 12 caps and 4 goals.[2]
Captain of Grande Torino
Standing 1.70 m tall, sturdy yet quick, he started out as a centre-forward before establishing himself as an inside-left. He combined dribbling, tackling, positional sense and extraordinary stamina, to the point of being deployed in defence, midfield or attack.[1] Gigi Garanzini, in the Enciclopedia dello Sport, describes his play like this:
"he dribbled with ease but without excess, found the net with either foot indifferently; an exceptional sense of timing in the air let him score many headers, despite standing only one metre seventy"
With Torino he won the league titles of 1942-43, 1945-46, 1946-47, 1947-48 and 1948-49, plus the 1942-43 Coppa Italia.[2] In 1946-47 he was the league's top scorer with 29 of the 105 goals of the so-called "machine-gun attack"; the following year he finished second, behind Juventus's Giampiero Boniperti.[1] Tallies of his career with the granata vary depending on the source: 97 goals in 170 league matches according to the Enciclopedia dello Sport, 118 in 195 according to Toro.it, 139 in 274 official matches according to the Dizionario Biografico.[1][2][3]
Grande Torino was also the backbone of the national team: in the spring of 1947 national coach Vittorio Pozzo fielded nine, then ten, granata players against Switzerland and Hungary.[4] In those years the Mazzola family lived on via Torricelli, in the Crocetta district.[1] From his first marriage, celebrated on 16 March 1942 with Emilia Ranaldi, were born Alessandro, known as Sandro (1942), and Ferruccio (1945); after separating in the autumn of 1946, he married Giuseppina Cutrona in Vienna on 20 April 1949, two weeks before his death.[1]
The granata quarter of an hour
At the Filadelfia the team's legend was tied to a ritual. Whenever Torino needed to come back, the supporter Oreste Bolmida, a railwayman and stationmaster at Porta Nuova, would enter the Filadelfia with a State Railways horn and sound its signal; at that signal the captain would roll up his sleeves and fifteen to twenty minutes of relentless attacking would begin.[4] These were the "granata quarters of an hour", in which, as the Dizionario Biografico writes, "Captain Valentino" sounded the charge for his teammates.[1] The most often cited episode dates to 20 April 1947 against Vicenza: according to Garanzini, "with his sleeves barely rolled up, he scored three goals in two minutes", between the 29th and 31st minute of the second half; Sky Sport speaks of three goals in three minutes.[2][4]
Lisbon and Superga
In early May 1949 Torino travelled to Lisbon for a friendly against Benfica, organised as a farewell match for Francisco Ferreira[1] and to raise funds for the Portuguese club, then in financial difficulty.[5] On 4 May, on the way back, the Fiat G.212 carrying the team crashed into the retaining wall of the Basilica of Superga: all 31 people on board died, Mazzola among them.[1][5] Two days later Indro Montanelli wrote in the Corriere della Sera:
"Heroes are always immortal in the eyes of those who believe in them. And so the boys will believe that Torino is not dead: it is only away from home"
The article appeared on page three, two days after the crash.[6]
Legacy
Garanzini reports that for Fulvio Bernardini, Enzo Bearzot, Ferruccio Valcareggi and Azeglio Vicini, "who saw them all play, the greatest was Valentino Mazzola".[2] In 2019 Francesco Bramardo and Gino Strippoli dedicated to him the book Valentino Mazzola… morirò giovane ("Valentino Mazzola… I will die young", Priuli & Verlucca), which draws from his second wife's account the premonition expressed in that title.[7]
On 3 June 2019, in Moncalieri, the sports facility in the Santa Maria district, home of Torino Calcio Disabili, was named after him.[8] In Turin the toponymy commission approved, on 14 May 2019, the naming of a park in piazza Tancredi Galimberti, a short walk from the Filadelfia; its inauguration, postponed also because of the pandemic, took place on 4 May 2023.[9] In July of that same year the park's plaque was vandalised and destroyed during the night.[10]
Pages linking here
- Grande Torino
- Moncalieri
- Sandro Mazzola
- Stazione di Porta Nuova
- Superga air disaster
- Torino Football Club
Related articles: Grande Torino, Moncalieri, Stazione di Porta Nuova, Superga air disaster
Sources
- Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
- Treccani – Enciclopedia dello Sport
- Toro.it — 26 January 2026
- Sky Sport — 4 May 2023
- Panorama — 4 May 2024
- Case della Memoria
- Toro.it — 27 November 2019
- Toro.it
- Toro.it — 26 April 2023
- Toro.it — 17 July 2023