Maratona and Elsewhere #16/bis : The Grumbling Appendix

On Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ 1980 album, “Get Happy”, there is a track entitled “Clowntime Is Over”. I think we can say with complete confidence that Mr MacManus wasn’t referring to Serie A referees when he wrote that one.

Davide Massa was suspended for his handling of our game against Milan, then we had Paolo Silvio Mazzoleni’s one-eyed masterclass in the derby and talk of Daniele Orsato also being suspended for not knowing how to use a flag. No such luck; Orsato refereed Lazio vs. Fiorentina the following week and found sufficient time to wave his yellow card on eight separate occasions. Then came Nine-Bookings-The-Clown (to use his Native American name) Andrea Gervasoni’s horrorshow in, and ban following, the Sampdoria game. Their last-gasp penalty was laughable enough, but blowing for half-time as they “scored” was embarrassing. We can argue that we have five points fewer than we should have, thanks to these individuals. Five points that would put us in a European place just behind our next opponents, Inter. Ah, another of the “big” teams. Expect we’ll get a raw deal against them on Sunday night, then. No idea as yet which buffoon will be given the whistle.

Actually, Mazzoleni deserves a special mention. Those who remember last year’s outrageous SuperCoppa game in Beijing in which Napoli were robbed by (guess who?) Venaria Town may remember him. Napoli were leading 2-1 after 70 minutes or so, then Mazzoleni sent off two of their players and manager Mazzari and awarded a penalty to the gobbi. There is a Mazzoleni family up in the mountains near Turin who make their living as skiing instructors, so I’m told. Gobbi to a man, they apparently deny being related to this guy. Can’t say I blame them.

***

We’re towards the end of the international break (I’m writing this on the morning of Tuesday, October 15th) and I’ve been finding it difficult to raise much enthusiasm for this round of fixtures, but the prospect of Kamil Glik, Jakub Błaszczykowski , Robert Lewandowski et al pissing on England’s chips is an interesting one. Forty years almost to the day since Jan Tomaszewski’s goalkeeping heroics prevented England from going to the World Cup Finals in West Germany in 1974, I’m hoping that the 18,000 Polish fans at Wembley drown out that fucking awful English brass band. There is something endearingly moronic about the supporters of certain English national sports teams: we have the “Barmy Army”, who are a bunch of tone-deaf drunks who detract from any cricketing occasion; we have the meat pie manufacturer-sponsored aforementioned brass band who follow the football team and seem to have a repertoire of three tunes (I use the words “repertoire” and “tunes” advisedly); and we have the smug, white, middle-class rugby union types who see no irony in singing the negro spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” at Twickenham. Bless ‘em.

                                                                              ***

I’m expecting a full Stadio Olimpico on Sunday; it was full last time Inter came, and I see no reason for it not to be so this time. Isn’t it strange how the stadium’s full when we play teams from the city of Milan and not when we play our so-called cousins? It would appear to the untrained eye that the Milanisti and Interisti live closer to Turin than the gobbi. 

I’m not sure what to expect of the game itself, other than the customary refereeing blunders. With injuries and suspensions, we have no defence at the moment and Inter apparently have problems in attack. That said, with Marcelo Larrondo of the broken foot, Ciro “one goal this season” Immobile and the Meggiorini, one could argue that we have problems in attack, too. The returns of Gazzi and Barreto are better than a poke in the eye, I suppose, but the rumours of Vives playing in defence don’t exactly fill me with confidence.

Milan themselves? Bravo to Philippe Mexès for maintaining his impressive run of petulance in Piemonte. At least this time he hit that shrinking violet and epitome of fair play Giorgio Chiellini, instead of aiming a slap at our Head of Ticketing. As for his club, they were hauled over the coals for their supporters’ alleged racist chanting when they played the gobbi last week. Fined €50k and ordered to play Udinese behind closed doors. Only one slight problem: there was no racist chanting by the Milan supporters. There was no independent, verifiable evidence of racist chanting.

Somehow I can’t imagine Venaria Town being told to play behind closed doors by the (spineless, corrupt, brown-nosing) football authorities in this country, despite their shameful record of racist chanting. I’ve lifted this directly from The Guardian’s “Said & Done” column from October 12th, which they themselves lifted from the Gazzetta dello Sport two days previously, as an example:

“Fabio Cannavaro, revealing why Juventus fans like to aim racist abuse at Mario Balotelli: "It's out of fear, perhaps respect. He has an attitude they don't like, he's strong and opponents are scared of him. That's why they tease him."

So that’s all right, then. Singing “if you jump, Balotelli dies” shows respect. I’ve heard some bullshit in my lifetime...

                                                                              ***

I’d like to finish on a high note, for once, so... some good news! We’ve won something! According to the aforementioned Gazzetta, we have been voted the best fans in Serie A by the 50 Anonymous Players (whoever they are).We came top with 18% of the vote! Ok, that’s only nine players out of fifty, but a win’s a win!

See you again next week to moan and drip about our loss / to celebrate our victory over Inter (delete as applicable).

F.V.C.G.!

P.S.: A former football manager who shall remain nameless once declared that football wasn’t a matter of life-and-death; it was more important than that. I don’t believe this for a moment. However, I have recently discovered that my father has prostate cancer and I’d like to encourage anyone reading this to consider supporting Movember next month. Even if you end up looking like an ageing pornstar for a couple of weeks, as I suspect I will, it’s for a very good cause.

Steve is a season ticket holder who moved to Torino in 2009 after meeting a Torinese lady called Raffaella on Facebook - you can follow Steve on Twitter here.

Maratona and Elsewhere #16 : “Bury my heart at Wounded Ankle”

Torino 0-1 Juventus 29.09.13

So we didn’t get the dry-aged prime rib we thought we had ordered. We didn’t get the bottle of Barolo either, but rather a table wine that tasted like it had actually been made from a table.

Derby day had begun pleasantly enough with a quasi-traditional English breakfast – and, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet and thereby making a terrible pun, my homemade baked beans were very well-received – but events soon took on a vaguely farcical quality. For future reference, whoever it is at City Hall who is responsible for public events might need to rethink the scheduling of a half-marathon on the morning of a derby. Driving to the stadium was an almighty pain in the arse.

Giving them the entire Curva Primavera put a nose or two out of joint, mine included. Eight-hundred-and-something of our Primavera members, some of whom are elderly and in no condition whatsoever for the Maratona, were obliged to either vacate their seats and move to the Maratona or not come to the game at all. The rationale behind this decision was a purely financial one; to shift more tickets. We, the feckless, irresponsible supporters, apparently never fill the stadium, so giving us fewer tickets was clearly what the doctor ordered. And what happened? The gobbi didn’t sell their entire allocation. Cairo’s customary reverse Midas touch in action.

And what of our visitors? They were virtually inaudible from where I was standing, though I understand that they were all that television viewers could hear. A similar divorce from reality was evident in some of their banners, the second largest of which proclaimed “MILANO”. Another simply read “011”, which probably serves as a reminder of the Turin dialling code when they call from home in Calabria and Puglia to buy tickets.

We, unusually, had a drummer. Any reader who is familiar with the joke about Ringo Starr and a foot spa will need no further explanation.

The game itself was less than gripping and doesn’t merit further discussion here. Our grand total of zero goal attempts on target speaks volumes. Yes, there were some controversial incidents, but as a spectacle it lacked quality.

Everyone saw that Carlos Tevez was offside and that Pogba’s goal should not have stood. Even the BBC and Paolo Bandini at “The Guardian” commented on it, and either of them commenting about Torino is about as rare as rocking-horse shit, so there is no need for further discussion here, either.

Some of the post-game tit-for-tat stuff was possibly of more, if academic, interest. Bastardo parruccato pluricondannato Conte said that Ciro Immobile should have been sent off for his challenge on Tevez, and that they would have won against 10 men even without the offside goal, considering their attacking superiority (see below). However, referee Mazzoleni was clearly wary of sending off half a Juventus player, and so Immobile stayed on the pitch. Tevez posted photos of his not-broken ankle on Twitter. Cairo pointed out that Marcelo Larrondo hadn’t posted any photos of his very-much-broken foot two weeks previously. [Miraculously, Tevez was fit to play for 55 minutes following Immobile’s 36th minute challenge and in the Champions League against Galatasaray three days later.]

Conte was also quoted as saying that they had attacked for 70 minutes, as if to reinforce their “we deserved to win despite being wrongly awarded the winning goal” party line. A quick visit to legaseriea.it, however, reveals that possession was 52% to 48% in their favour. Let’s do some quick arithmetic, shall we? 52% of 90 minutes comes to 46 minutes and 48 seconds; that’s as near as “fuck you and the cat on your head, Conte” dammit one-third less than 70 minutes. Interestingly, if we apply the same rocket science to the number of scudetti Juventus claim to have won legitimately, we arrive at a figure not a million miles away from Zdenek Zeman’s “22 or 23 maximum”. As the completely impartial torinofc.it put it, Conte must have been a lot better at Italian at school than at mathematics.

His attempts to claim some kind of moral superiority having won yet another match thanks to a dubious refereeing decision made me more than a tad bilious. I seem to recall a certain Venaria Town manager who bore an uncanny resemblance to the Antonio Conte who received a 10-month ban last year for failing to report match fixing. Swore his innocence, but made a plea bargain. Strange behaviour for an innocent man, wouldn’t you think, entering a plea bargain?

Maybe he was just anxious because he’d never previously managed an entire derby against a team of 11 players? But his style (and, in fact, the so-called stile Juventus) is the diametric opposite of fair play, which often appears to be a foreign language in football. In Italy we have the concept of “furbizia”, which roughly translates as “cunning” but can be taken to mean ”gaining an unfair advantage by circumventing the rules and/or accepted conventions”. Examples of this could include agreeing a price with a tradesman and then paying less upon completion of the job, or, I don’t know, injecting football players with erythropoietin or conspiring to rig football matches or something (shrugs shoulders).

If honesty and fair play are not part of your make-up, it is very unlikely that you will be able to identify and appreciate these traits in – or transmit them to - other people. The skills underlying the ability to make a correct judgement are the same as those required to recognise a correct judgement. [See Kruger J, Dunning D. “Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1999); 77; 6: 121-34. Or, better still, read about it in Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Science” (ISBN 978-0-00-728487-0).]

Juventus’ parent company, Exor, has total assets of €125.85 billion. We play in a renovated version of their old stadium. Our hands are down the back of the sofa, looking for money to rebuild Filadelfia, while the (juventino) Piero Fassino-led City Council leases Juventus 180,000 square metres of public land at Continassa at 58 cents per square metre for 99 years. (Alessandro Cavasinni at Gazzetta dello Sport reports that certain Council members will soon be up before the beak). Is this fair play in action?

Fassino also appointed a certain Giuseppe Alberto Zunino to be President of the Fondazione Filadelfia, though my understanding is that, thanks to online petitions (see change.org) and making our disgust crystal clear, the latter has declined the job. Why exactly would a gobbo Mayor choose a man with FIAT connections and a criminal conviction related to the construction industry to manage the reconstruction of the home of Il Grande Torino? Is this honesty in action?

Away from balance sheets and courtrooms, a vocal section of their support is of the opinion that there are no black Italians. This is a classic example of the aforementioned inability to recognise one’s own general ignorance – we even sold them a black Italian three months ago, porco dio! And, like their manager and their in-house comedy “newspaper” Tuttosport, these people will not be winning the Nobel Prize for Mathematics any time soon. Not as long as they believe, contrary to all available evidence, that 28 plus 1 equals 31.

Do Juventus, their owners, and their supporters all come from a parallel universe where there is no honesty or fair play, only furbizia? If they are visitors from another dimension – maybe David Icke and his tinfoil hat could tell us about the Agnelli, the Bilderberg Group, and extra-terrestrial lizards? – those who lack ignorance bring with them a peculiar soul-corroding cynicism. Granata is the antithesis of such cynicism.

Forza Toro sempre.

PS: Follow OperazioneDelleAlpi ‏on Twitter to learn more about how they got their old stadium on the cheap.

Steve is a season ticket holder who moved to Torino in 2009 after meeting a Torinese lady called Raffaella on Facebook - you can follow Steve on Twitter here.

Maratona and Elsewhere #15 : "Insert Shakespeare reference here"

Torino 2-2 Hellas Verona - 25.09.13

Hellas Verona have one scudetto to their name, that of 1984/5. That season was unique in that it was the only season when referees were chosen at random instead of being assigned to specific matches by a special commission, the 'designatori arbitrali'. The idea behind this was to improve the image of the game after the usual match-fixing and corruption shenanigans; to eliminate the (ahem) possibility that certain clubs were influencing the appointment of certain referees to certain games with a view to distorting the results.

One doesn’t need an IQ over 70 to see that something strange had been happening:

• In the 1980/1 Serie A season, Venaria Town won the scudetto and Roma finished 2nd.
• In the 1981/2 Serie A season, Venaria Town won the scudetto and Roma finished 3rd. 
• In the 1982/3 Serie A season, Roma won the scudetto and Venaria Town finished 2nd. 
• In the 1983/4 Serie A season, Venaria Town won the scudetto and Roma finished 2nd. 
• In the 1984/5 Serie A season, under the new referee selection system, Verona and Torino occupied the top two places, while Venaria Town finished equal 5th and Roma 7th. How refreshing!

“But Steve,” – I hear you ask – “what happened in 1985/6 when the old system was reintroduced?”

• In the 1985/6 Serie A season, Venaria Town won the scudetto and Roma finished 2nd. 

***

When we arrived at the stadium there was no real sense of anticipation. There was an atmosphere of “What the hell are we doing here on Wednesday night? The derby’s Sunday lunchtime.” With all due respect to Verona (“Veronese, sei un figlio di troia! Pezzo di merda sei tu! Sei giallo blu! Sei giallo blu!”), this wasn’t the match we were interested in. To me it was like being led to one’s table by the maître d’hôtel, ordering the thick, juicy, dry-aged prime rib and the bottle of Barolo, and then having to sip tap water and nibble distractedly on a breadstick in the meantime.

[I was still recovering from having to watch our first win in Bologna in thirty-three years on a dodgy live stream at my better half’s nephew’s 7th birthday party, surrounded by anklebiters, their sickeningly proud parents, squadrons of tiger mosquitoes and not nearly enough alcohol. I usually react badly to children and mosquitoes at the best of times. Other than penicillin, my only other allergy is to country and western music, and I was subjected to two hours of that in a classroom this week. “Stand By Your Man” three times, FFS. There are times in a man’s life when deafness would be a blessing. But I digress.]

So was Toro vs. Verona the calm before the storm? Well, there were some frayed tempers here and there, particularly on the concourse at half-time, but we didn’t have the all-out-brawl silliness of the Milan game. We’re anxious about Sunday, certainly, but I wasn’t aware of that anxiety affecting the players. I got into a conversation with a woman from the Red Cross having missed our second goal whilst on beer duty. She didn’t know who’d scored either, but the chant of “Alessio è! Alessio Cerci!” solved that problem. He later talked himself into a yellow card, more’s the pity. The fact that Kamil Glik spent the entire game on the bench avoiding a yellow card and suspension for the derby should have been a big enough hint for Cerci to keep his trap shut, but no. That Luca Toni’s a big lad, isn’t he?

The players left the pitch to our applause and an exhortation for Sunday: “UCCIDETELI!”

And so to more pressing matters. The gentle reader who believes that things come in threes will no doubt be aware that Cerci has converted penalties in our last two matches and that Glik was sent off in both last season’s derbies. There is no statistical law that states that these events cannot be repeated. However, though a card or two for our captain would not be a surprise, I simply can’t see us getting any change out of the hunchbacks in the penalty department, even with the aid of my bleach-and-cockroach-encrusted crystal ball (details available on request as always). The appointed referee Paolo Silvio Mazzoleni (an antique dealer from Bergamo, it says here) isn’t one I know, but we will have Daniel Orsato (an electrician from Vicenza) and our old friend Paolo Tagliavento (professional clown from Terni) as goal-line officials, so anything could happen. Incidentally, Tagliavento refereed the Bologna vs. Milan game last week, in which Milan were two goals down in the 88th minute and managed to draw in injury time. Does that sound familiar?

If we are to enjoy the benefit of a red card and a penalty, a not-unpleasant scenario would be Ciro Immobile scoring from the spot after (welcome home) Angelo Ogbonna takes an early bath. Personally, however, I would prefer the red card to be for Giorgio Chiellini, for whom I have a dislike bordering on the pathological.

My predictions? Well, it’s always better to be circumspect in situations such as these, so I’ll go for a poisonous atmosphere, Cerci marked and/or kicked out of the game, some dubious officiating and a defeat, our noses to be rubbed in it by the striped half of the stadium (yes, half – the ticketing arrangements have bordered upon risible). Here’s hoping I’m wrong.

Now to invoke the curse of my fantacalcio team (it’s called fastnbulbous!, Beefheart fans) upon as many of their players as possible.

A presto, tutti.

F.V.C.G.!

Steve is a season ticket holder who moved to Torino in 2009 after meeting a Torinese lady called Raffaella on Facebook - you can follow Steve on Twitter here.

Maratona and Elsewhere #14 : 'Adding insult to injury'

Torino 2-2 AC Milan - 14.09.13

As John Lydon said to the audience as he closed the final Sid Vicious-era Sex Pistols concert at San Francisco's Winterland in January 1978: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

Ignore songs about Berlusconi going to prison. Ignore fighting in the Maratona. Ignore excellent goals from Danilo D’Ambrosio and Alessio Cerci. Ignore being 2-0 up against the mighty Milan with 87 minutes on the clock and deservedly so. Ignore Milan’s first goal, for which there was some doubt about offside. Ignore Milan’s Nigel De Jong splitting Marcelo Larrondo’s lip with his elbow, and Mario Balotelli aiming first a kick and then a slap at our goalkeeper Daniele Padelli – well, the officials did, so why can’t we? Are we sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

We’re playing added time at the end of the game. Toro are winning 2-1. Marcelo Larrondo is sitting on the turf with an injury which turns out to be a broken 5th metatarsal which requires surgery. He is shouting to all and sundry that he has a broken foot and requires medical attention. Milan’s goalkeeper Christian Abbiati engages in conversation with Larrondo, but chooses for whatever reason not to alert the referee or the medical staff. No Good Samaritan, he. The Torino bench have asked for play to be interrupted to allow treatment to and substitution of the injured player. The 32-year-old referee Davide Massa - a banker (sic) by profession - allows play to continue. Why, exactly? Because he thinks that Larrondo is pretending that he has a broken foot? Because he doesn’t know what he is doing, as evidenced by his subsequent 3-match suspension from refereeing in Serie A? Because he has been told that Milan aren’t allowed to lose?

The ball remains in play and in Milan’s possession. That is, until the ball goes out for a Milan throw.
At this point, regardless of the referee’s competence or lack of, one of the unwritten rules between professional football players is that the team in possession of the ball stops play to allow their injured opponent / fellow professional to receive medical attention.

Instead of allowing fair play to rear its ugly head, Milan allenatore Massimiliano Allegri – who had the sheer chutzpah to say in a post-match interview that we were “a little unfortunate” not to win – orders Philippe Mexès to take the throw-in before we can substitute Larrondo, and the resultant play leads to Giovanni Pasquale upending Andrea Poli for the penalty that gives Milan an undeserved draw with the last kick of the game.

Compare and contrast this scenario with an excerpt from Massimo Fini’s excellent article, “La slealta del Milan è un riflesso del mondo morale di Berlusconi” (“Milan’s unfairness is a reflection of Berlusconi’s moral world”), which can be found in its entirety without my inexact translation at massimofini.it:

(Cue wavy lines)

It’s January 21st, 1990. Atalanta versus Milan in the quarter-finals of the Coppa Italia. Milan are losing 1-0 in the 88th minute. Their attacker Stefano Borgonovo is laying - apparently injured - in Atalanta’s penalty area. Atalanta’s Glenn Strömberg puts the ball out of play to allow Milan to treat their injured player. However, the sporting Frank Rijkaard (he of spitting-in-Rudi-Völler’s-hair fame, lest we forget), instead of returning possession, throws the ball to his team-mate Daniele Massaro, who crosses the ball back into the penalty area, where the now miraculously healthy Borgonovo hits the deck and the referee points to the spot. Arrigo Sacchi orders Franco Baresi to not do the decent thing – to miss the unjust penalty - and Milan draw the game and progress to the semis.

Fini’s article goes on to criticise the cynical “money-and-power-are-everything” nature of Silvio Berlusconi and how the club he bought in 1986 manifests his personality on the field of play. An inability to lose with dignity. I would add that said infantile world view (Exhibit 94:  his current threats to withdraw his PDL party from the coalition and bring down the government should he be sent to prison by those nasty “communist” judges), vast wealth and – shall we say – some interesting connections allow for petulance and intimidation both on and off the pitch... well, the Maratona didn’t sing “voi siete come la Juve!” just for the sake of something to do on a Saturday evening.

I have seen the broadcaster Mediaset – like AC Milan, a subsidiary of Berlusconi’s Fininvest - rechristened “Mafiaset” on at least one occasion, possibly due to his membership of the P2 Masonic Lodge and his historic connections to the fragrant (or should that be flagrant) Bettino Craxi, who allowed him to create his national commercial television network when RAI was the only national broadcaster permitted by law. Even his hair is dubious. And as for the tax evasion and underage girls... But, again, this is not supposed to be a political blog, so if this sort of thing is grist to your personal mill please feel free to investigate elsewhere.
So, the general consensus of opinion is that we were shafted on the pitch: only internet trolls such as menomalexsilvio on The Guardian website have suggested otherwise, to my knowledge. Off the pitch? I need to retain some bile for the derby, so I’ll merely provide a list:

• Torino FC was fined €4000 for a flare being thrown on the pitch, which didn’t happen. A flare was thrown from the Maratona in the second half, but it landed about five metres behind the goal we were defending.
• Kamil Glik was fined €1500 as captain of the “offending” team.
• Sporting Director Gianluca Petrachi was fined €3000 for being overheard in the dressing room after the game - by an employee of the Procura Federale – criticising the officials and using a blasphemous expression.
• General Secretary Pantaleo Longo was temporarily suspended from the Italian football federation for insulting the fourth official for not allowing us to substitute Larrondo.
• Milan’s Philippe Mexès slapped our Head of Ticketing, Fabio Bernardi, and was photographed so doing by Nicolò Campo (see Toro.it). No sanction, to my knowledge.

After the final whistle, the Maratona chanted “Venite sotto la Curva!”, but most of our players had left the pitch by that point, clearly angry and sickened. Il Capitano Glik and a few others applauded in thanks and acknowledgement, but were obviously – like us – not really in any mood to be consoled. I myself took a detour for a numbing drink and got home at two in the morning, still shaking my head. But it wasn’t exactly a mood of disbelief; we’ve been here many times before. As Toro fans we’ve had (too) much experience of the rough end of the footballing pineapple. These injustices permeate the collective memory and one becomes able almost to predict what will happen next, with a turn of the stomach and a tiny voice saying “here we go again”.

Lessons to be learned? Kakà and Robinho left much to be desired. That’ll teach them to be in my fantasy team. Will use the same technique for the derby. ;-)

F.V.C.G.

Steve is a season ticket holder who moved to Torino in 2009 after meeting a Torinese lady called Raffaella on Facebook - you can follow Steve on Twitter here.

Maratona & Elsewhere #13 : Toro v Sassuolo: “The one in which we’re very rude about Enzo Maresca’s mother”

Torino 2-0 Sassuolo - 25.08.13

....pation!

Last week against Pescara didn’t really feel like the real thing, to be honest. More a holiday atmosphere than anything else. The Piemontese equivalent of a “Kiss Me Quick” hat and a stick of rock wouldn’t have been out of place. Much catching up with friends not seen since May, comparing suntans (not me, obviously, being a Barbarian), it felt like an aperitivo, as if we were all just dropping in to say “ciao” en route to another engagement.

But this was the real thing.

In M&E#12 I touched upon the possibility of Enzo Maresca joining the club and the reaction said possibility provoked. Some behavioural psychologists speak of the concept of reinforcement, whereby certain behaviours can be strengthened or increased via reward or punishment. I vaguely recall studying this in Manchester in the late ‘80s in moments of relative sobriety.

We entered the stadium as normal, bought beers as normal. Then the singing started: 

La mamma di Maresca è una puttana! 

Bastardo non ti vogliamo! 

Enzo Maresca gobbo di merda! 

Maresca tu sei un figlio di puttana! 

I would like to think that the many thousand fully-qualified Granata behavioural psychologists present were merely indulging in some form or another of reinforcement therapy for the benefit of Cairo, Ventura and Petrachi, something along the lines of “don’t you fucking dare try anything like that again.”

[The aforementioned songs and their many variations feature regularly in the Maratona songbook, along with many other popular favourites. In the coming weeks and months I shall endeavour to devise a drinking game called “Maratona Binge-O!”, the purpose of which will be to consume a certain quantity of a particular beverage upon hearing a given song or chant from the Curva. As there are obvious dangers and practical difficulties inherent in attempting a drinking game inside the stadium, this will be a TV-based game for armchair Ultras everywhere, season ticket holders who are unable or unwilling to attend away games, and for anyone who for whatever reason needs a drink when watching Toro. I know how you feel.]

The recently-but-not-dearly departed Angelo Ogbonna also received a “gobbo di merda!” for good measure. It would have been rude to leave him out, after all, and - as my late grandmother used to say -honey catches more flies than vinegar (which puts honey in second place, behind bullshit). I wish him well and hope he enjoys his next few months on the bench at Venaria Town before going to Sampdoria on loan in January in order to get a game before the World Cup comes around.

And so to the announcement of the teams. No prizes for guessing whose names were greeted with the least enthusiasm: Vives and the Meggiorini.

The Ultras still seem to be in pre-season. Perhaps the guys who can find their own arse with both hands are still at the beach? Any way you slice it, the banners (which were made from somebody’s mother’s floral wallpaper and single-sided, so those standing behind couldn’t read them) and general orchestration left something to be desired. The rendition of “Forza! Vecchio! Cuore! Granata!” was the weakest I have heard since my debut against Modena in November 2010.

I will also retain the right to get a little bit pissed off whenever they become so self-absorbed that the game (and others’ enjoyment thereof) takes second place to their collective ego. The €230 I paid for my season ticket was to watch the team play, thankyouverymuchrantover.

Continuing in contrary mood, many people in the Maratona – those in my immediate vicinity and myself included - disagreed with Rob and Peter and with 52% of ToroNews voters in their selection of Vives as Man of the Match. In the Maratona we don’t have the benefit of commentary, action replays and multiple camera angles, but we do have the advantage of being there.

My received wisdom (Maratona level 2, section 213) was that Cerci had a good game and was M.o.M., despite playing out of position for much of the game as a second striker. No surprise that his goal – an almost carbon copy of the beauty he scored at Fiorentina last season – came from the right wing. Honourable mentions also for Matteo Brighi for his goal and all-round first half performance (I hope his injury - an adductor strain, I believe - is a temporary inconvenience), for Migjen Basha who came on in his stead second half, El Pelado Rodriguez and Padelli in goal (who made only nine tackles fewer than Vives, according to legaseriea.it!).

As an aside, four days later 67% of ToroNews readers who responded said they would replace Vives with Bellomo for the Atalanta game! Shall we add “fickle” to “superstitious”, and/or get bogged down with statistics instead? Nah. Let’s not.

I think Ciro Immobile can be happy enough with his performance, if not with the cretinous short corner routine on 80 minutes that led to him receiving a yellow card on the halfway line for what could be considered a professional foul. We had three guys waiting at the far post, for fuck’s sake. The exact same kind of moronic set-piece – I’m assuming we don’t practice set-pieces in training – that all too often last season led to the ball arriving in our penalty area for Gillet to deal with.

I also have to disagree with ToroNews regarding Orsato, the referee. He seemed keen to wave play on when there was no discernible advantage to be had, and there was one comedy moment where he ran 30 metres to bark at Ventura, having just given us a free kick. Ah well, it could have been worse, I suppose; we could have had Bergonzi (who refereed the most recent derby after his short break in Dubai with Beppe Marotta, and the pleasure of whose company we’ll have again in Bergamo next Sunday), or Rocchi, Tagliavento, Peruzzo, Banti or any of the other clowns. Orsato getting a favourable review for being merely average shows you the standard of officiating we have in Italy.

So, for Pescara 3-0 in 2012, read Sassuolo 2-0 in 2013. We saluted our first win and first Fisherman’s Friends of the season with “Tutta la notte, coca e mignotte!”(“All night, cocaine and whores!”) and invited the players to join us under the Curva, which they duly did – cf. the Pescara game.

And what of the new-fangled 3-5-2 formation? I’m not a fan, on the evidence of this match. Kamil Glik doesn’t look comfy on the right of a back three, Darmian and D’Ambrosio aren’t wingers, and Cerci doesn’t play with his back to goal. I’m hoping for a counter-attacking 4-4-2 and Farnerud playing left right out for the Atalanta game, which is yet another 2045 kick-off on a Sunday night. Don’t Lega Serie A realise that some people have to get up for work on a Monday morning?! It’s not exactly conducive to attracting away fans to add to the atmosphere and/or televisual spectacle, either.

FORZA! to our travelling tifosi.

Tune in next time for M&E#14: “Toro 0 - 2 Milan”

F.V.C.G.!

P.S.: Whisper it - fourth place in the classifica! Officially we’re 4th, because (get this) in the event of two or more teams having identical records the tie is broken according to last season’s final league position (shakes head). We’d be 4th alphabetically, too, BUT WE’RE FOUR PLACES ABOVE THE GOBBI.

P.P.S.: Final word on superstitions. Mine is wearing a silver earring in the shape of the Warner Brothers Tasmanian devil –yes, I know I should know better at my age, but I didn’t wear it against Pescara while I did against Sassuolo. And which game did we win? ;-)

Steve is a season ticket holder who moved to Torino in 2009 after meeting a Torinese lady called Raffaella on Facebook - you can follow Steve on Twitter here.

Maratona & Elsewhere #12: Toro v Pescara: “17 is unlucky for some.”

Torino 1-2 Pescara - 17.08.13

The number 17 is considered unlucky in Italy, and so playing against Pescara in the Coppa Italia (I refuse to use the name of the sponsor) on August 17th turned out to be for us. But not for them, curiously. Lady Luck is a capricious creature, isn’t she? Italians generally are a superstitious bunch, prone to using certain gestures to ward off the evil eye, knocking on iron (“tocca ferro”) for luck, not cutting their nails on a Thursday, practising Catholicism, etc…

My personal favourites relate to the selection of lottery numbers. There are many television charlatans in this country with premium-rate telephone lines who claim some kind of paranormal ability to predict numbers. There is an ancient Neapolitan system known as La Smorfia, in which the first letter of something you dreamed about corresponds to a lottery number. I have a book on this stuff which dates from 1996, in which a naked woman represents 21 and head lice represent 87, to give but two examples. I’m not sure what number equates to a naked woman with head lice; I’ll get back to you on that.

“But Steve,” I hear you say, “last night I had a dream about an octopus living inside an acoustic guitar!” That’s 67, my friends (I kid you not).

The book includes many photographs of famous people, accompanied by seemingly random digits. I include one below for your dining and dancing pleasure.

(Yes, that is James Hewitt.)

The relevance of all this? I repeat, the number 17 is considered unlucky in Italy. I am led to believe that Italian high-rise buildings often do not have a 17th floor – bear this in mind if you intend to visit Italy on your next bungee jumping holiday - and Alitalia don’t have a Row 17 on their seat plans. But why is this? Well, if you rearrange the Roman numerals XVII you get “VIXI”, which can be found on tombstones. This is Latin for “he lived” (i.e., “he’s dead now!”). Salvatore Masiello wears 17. Make of that what you will, but he’s certainly been no good luck charm for us thus far. I recently bought a lotto ticket and chose his shirt number and those of Vives and the Meggiorini. Won bugger
all. Q.E.D. 

*** 

But I digress. The match? Considering the fact that most of Italy is still on holiday during the third week in August, a crowd in the region of 10,000 for a cup game was quite impressive. Which is more than can be said for the game, more’s the pity. After about 3 minutes I took out my notebook and pen, ready to scribble some pithy aperçus, but before I knew it one of the Ultras (possibly drugged) conducting the singing had jumped up ten rows of seats and was in my right ear, berating me for not joining in! Trying to explain that I was writing for an English language blog about Toro was as much use as trying to teach a dog a card trick. Fortunately I am not an aggressive person by nature and I was too surprised to react to the invasion of my personal ear, to be honest. I do, however, have a contingency plan for any repeat performance :-)

Other than nursing my perceived grievance – there were many others not singing, and none of them were writing! – I have little to report other than that one of the thirty-or-so Pescara supporters lit and threw a flare at our brothers and sisters in the Curva Primavera. This unsurprisingly brought a reaction from the Maratona: a chant of “Uccideteli!” (“Kill them!”) and a not-so-friendly invitation to a rendezvous after the game. For their supporters’ behaviour, Pescara were quite rightly fined €7.000. Quite unbelievably, our club was fined the same amount for our brothers and sisters having the temerity to throw the damned thing back!

So, a defeat to a team from Serie B, one that we beat 3-0 in our opening game in Serie A last year. What to read into it? Well, we have nine new faces in the squad – eight if you don’t include Cesare Bovo, who was with us on loan in 2007 – a new Captain, and a new formation, so it will be interesting to see how and how soon we find the correct blend. Pescara themselves appeared to me to be fitter than us and seemed to know each other better. I must add, however, that I’m not 100% convinced we set out to win that game. The second half had the feel of a pre-season friendly, a training exercise, a let’s-concentrate-on-the-league, boys. 

The general mood of the Curva was less-than-positive in the immediate aftermath. Indeed, we sent the players away with a flea in their collective ear and a respectful suggestion that they show some balls in future. My ticket had a face value of twenty centesimi (about seventeen pence), though, so I suppose I can say it was value for money. (I have no idea why I was given a paper ticket, as my season ticket is in the form of a smartcard.)

I could rant and rave about the Coppa being seeded, but if we can’t beat Pescara in the third elimination round I’d be wasting my breath. They now play Spezia in the fourth round, which will be useful for both teams in terms of fitness and squad rotation, and the possibility of playing Milan at the San Siro will be something to look forward to for their supporters. I think it would have been of benefit to OUR players and OUR supporters, too!

Just to put the cherry on the turd weekend, we also had the inaugural Mamma Cairo trophy, a four-team tournament contested by our Primavera squad and those of Milan, Inter, and Venaria Town, celebrating the life of the late mother of our club president. Unfortunately, the team from Venaria just happened to win the thing. So an unpleasant weekend all round; a cup defeat to a team in a lower division, and our president’s mother’s trophy awarded to the gobbi. The latter embarrassment was 100% avoidable. I wouldn’t have invited them, personally. 

In the week separating this mess and the beginning of the new Serie A campaign there was much noise aboutnCairo-Ventura-Petrachi bringing Enzo Maresca to the club (though both Petrachi and Ventura have subsequently employed a sloping-shoulders policy and denied any responsibility). Maresca is probably best-known in Granata circles for scoring against us in the February, 2002 derby and mimicking Marco Ferrante’s “horns” goal celebration (see below). 

The idea of a piss-taking ex-gobbo joining Toro did not exactly go down well. Indeed, Piero Chiambretti, who is a famous TV and radio personality in Italy and a proud Toro tifoso, declared he would change his lifelong allegiance if the deal went through. His and other supporters’ protests led to the idea getting kicked into the long grass, if you’ll forgive the pun. But more of that next time. For now, I’ll leave you trembling with antici...

F.V.C.G.!

Steve is a season ticket holder who moved to Torino in 2009 after meeting a Torinese lady called Raffaella on Facebook - you can follow Steve on Twitter here.

Maratona and Elsewhere #11 : ’Better late than never’ is a matter of opinion.

My apologies for the delay. I lost interest for a while there.  I went to the derby (purely as a spectator and not as a blogger, hence no notes taken) and the pantomime that was the game against Genoa - more of that to follow - and I felt so generally disgruntled about that game and our not-exactly-scintillating form in previous matches that I boycotted the Catania match and planned, as you may remember, to take up watching women’s volleyball.

Let’s face it: we weren’t great last season. We were the least-worst team in the division, and thoroughly deserved to be 17^th. For the most part, excluding some aberrations - such as the 5-1 at Atalanta, the win against Lazio, the brief lead against Napoli at home and the ultimately futile recovery from 0-3 away at Fiorentina - it didn’t make for enjoyable viewing. We were lacking in at least one department at some point in nearly every game, be that concentration (especially immediately after kick-offs and in the last 10 minutes), street-wisdom, tactics not suiting our top goalscorer, use or otherwise of the bench, and (in some cases) talent, to name but a few. We weren’t slash-your-wrists awful, and indeed would have finished higher with some luck and some better refereeing, but we simply weren’t good enough for most of the season. 

But “time heals nothing; it merely rearranges our memory” (© G. Numan, though he probably stole it from Philip K. Dick), so I’m back, memory rearranged, season ticket renewed. As much as I admire the ladies of Chieri Torino Volleyball (and I wish them well for their new season), they don’t play at the Comunale/Olimpico and that is where the Maratona is. 

Our transfer activity during the summer has been interesting and, I feel, generally positive. There’s still the small matter of the bans for the ex-Bari players and what to do with the autographed Ogbonna shirt that’s under my bed, but, like a second marriage, this has been a triumph of hope over experience for me. And at least I have a better idea this time around of the emotional rollercoaster ride ahead.

So, my take on the last three home games of the season?

The derby remains a bit of a blur. It was preceded by a very enjoyable Full quasi-English breakfast for eight which did involve certain amount of alcohol, ostensibly to settle any pre-match nerves.

After parking our cars we encountered a group of young gobbe who immediately crossed to the other side of the road and began hurling insults at us, especially at the women in our party. We responded in kind but I felt (and still feel) that that type of behaviour should be kept for the stadium. Not that it’s particularly decorative or edifying inside the stadium, of course... 

As I said previously, I didn’t take pen and paper to the derby, so my recollections are a bit sketchy, not that the alcoholic breakfast helped. I recall losing my voice. I recall the atmosphere being poisonous. I recall they had at least twice as many fans in our stadium as we had at theirs. I recall that it was 0-0 after 80 minutes or so. I recall that Bonucci was not red-carded for pulling Jonathas down by his shirt in the penalty area and that we were not given a spot-kick, even though the referee (the clown Bergonzi, who was reportedly staying in the same hotel as Beppe Marotta in Dubai in the week leading up to the game), linesman and goal-line official all had a clear view of the incident. I recall Kamil Glik being booked twice and sent off for fouls that weren’t fouls. Much like his straight red in the reverse fixture, funnily enough.

So, an unpleasant aftertaste, though it seemed to me that both sides were playing to win but we suffered from the usual dubious/pro-Venaria Town officiating and the aforementioned lack of street-wisdom.

The Genoa game was the diametric opposite: neither team played to win and the referee (the notorious alleged gobbo sympathiser Gianluca Rocchi) was barely noticeable! 

The match was preceded by what should have by all accounts been a moment’s silence for the victims of the accident in Genova harbour that week, a week that included the death aged 94 of ex-Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti (of whom the legendary Peter Bourne commented: “only the good die young.”). However, the tribute went awry. The stadium announcer only got as far as “... ex-Prime Minster...” before his voice disappeared in a cacophony of whistles. I was told after the game that many people in the Curva Primavera were holding aloft photos of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two anti-Mafia magistrates from Palermo who were assassinated in 1992 (may I suggest that the gentle reader looks elsewhere for the historical background?). I couldn’t see any of this as somebody in the Maratona had overdone it slightly with the fumogeni; I was more-or-less blind for three minutes and had to breathe through a t-shirt that is still stained purple from the smoke.

So the mood within the stadium was already fractious. Add to this the fact that the Maratona was split roughly 50/50 between those who had forgiven Genoa for relegating us in 2009 and those who hadn’t, and the realisation that we were watching a fixed match, and you have one angry stadium.

There was no football of which to speak.  No challenges of note. No attempts on goal (though the Lega Serie A website claimed there were 3 on-target and 10 off; I’m calling bullshit). Angelo Ogbonna ducked out of two attacking headers six yards from Genoa’s goal in the second half. The Maratona quickly grasped the situation and voiced it: “We have to win to stay in (Serie) A!”, became “Fuori le palle!” (“Show us some balls!”), which evolved into “Ma giocate o no?” (“Are you playing or not?”), then “Venduti!” (“Sold!”), which then dissolved into us olé-ing Genoa’s completed passes and telling all 22 players to fuck themselves.

The newspapers “Repubblica” and “Torino Cronaca” rated the players in their next editions. Neither gave any points for either keeper, deeming them spectators rather than players, whereas  the” Gazzetta dello Sport” gave the Maratona 8 out of 10, so with my fraction of 8 I had a better game than Gillet.

I am no different to the average bear in that I resent being treated like an idiot, and so did not take very kindly to being presented with a match that was so clearly fixed prior to kick-off. It stood out like a sore thumb / dog’s balls / Lady Gaga’s cock (delete as appropriate), and it highlighted the club’s general ignorance when dealing with the tifosi. Leading up to the derby, much was made of the offer of a mini-season ticket for the last three home fixtures. Many (admittedly fair-weather) supporters forked out for the three-match ticket, went to the derby and then brought their kids to the Genoa game, only to be presented with a farce. What kind of club sells a ticket knowing – and Cairo had to be complicit in this - that 33% of those games are not fair sporting contests? Does that club deserve to have supporters? With this in mind, I thought “Bugger it!” for the Catania game, and so missed Rolando Bianchi’s farewell... and that, I thought, was that.

But then I watched some of the Euro Under-21 tournament, was impressed by players such as Gabbiadini, Insigne and Immobile, and was then pleasantly surprised when the latter joined us, and so my interest slowly began to return. Then the peer pressure kicked in, so eventually I went to the stadium ticket office and handed over my €230. Not bad for 20 games, really.

As I said above, we’ve had a pretty good off-season thus far in terms of transfer activity (Bovo, Bellomo,  El Kaddouri, Maksimović, Immobile and Larrondo et al), and the latter pair appear to have an understanding from what I saw during the friendly against Novara. I feel we need 2 or 3 more bodies in and Vives and the Meggiorini out, but with the new personnel and the tactical shift from Ventura to 3-5-2 / 5-3-2 I think we’ll have a slightly more comfortable season than last season. We won’t be the least-worst team in Serie A this time around. He said, confidently.

I leave you with something I wrote in the heat of the moment after Genoa:

“My anger, well… instead of a new season ticket, I’ll give the money to my dentist, who is gobba, strangely enough. At least I’ll have something to show for the money, and I’ll get an anaesthetic with it.”

M&E 12: Pescara on Saturday. F.V.C.G.!  

  

Steve is a season ticket holder who moved to Torino in 2009 after meeting a Torinese lady called Raffaella on Facebook - you can follow Steve on Twitter here.

Maratona and Elsewhere #10 : "Balzaretti gets the bird"

Torino 1-2 Roma 14.04.13

I was talking with my dolce metà (literally, “sweet half”) about having difficulties composing this piece, if you’ll forgive me for using a verb as grandiose as “compose” to describe my ramblings. She asked me what the English expressions were for “ blocco dello scrittore” and “sindrome pagina bianca”. The fact they translate perfectly into English did not help much. I thought for a moment that writer’s cramp would have been preferable, but then it occurred to me that I wasn’t actually writing. Writer’s cramp probably no longer exists in the twenty-first century in the developed world, having been superseded by carpal tunnel syndrome and texter’s thumb. The travails of a blog hijacker…

Yet another Sunday afternoon that left an unpleasant aftertaste: there was violence before the match; during, a homecoming that Federico Balzaretti will not remember with much fondness aside from Roma’s three points; and Angelo Ogbonna suffering from foot-in-mouth disease in an interview afterwards.

The Maratona chanted: “you only have knives… we’ll fight you with our hands whenever you like.” It transpired that two Toro fans were stabbed outside the stadium during disturbances before the game. The Corriere dello Sport reported that the injured Toro fans were attacked by other Toro fans. This is highly unlikely, to put it mildly. There were fans of at least one other club present, camouflaged in Torino FC shirts. This was certainly disquieting on the day, and bodes ill for the derby.

Federico Balzaretti. Torino-born, Torino-bred. Ten years in a Torino shirt. Captain of the Primavera. Ninety-four appearances for the first team. Twenty-seven appearances for the national team at U-20 and U-21. A player of considerable talent. A future Granata legend-in-the-making. And then when the club collapsed in 2005, he joined… Juventus. For this lapse of judgement (betrayal, sacrilege, call it what you will), extenuating circumstances notwithstanding, he will never be forgiven.

His reception left no room for doubt.  My regular reader will be perfectly aware of the welcome given to ex-Juventini and the selections from the Maratona songbook reserved for special guests. Said songs were delivered with particular malice on this occasion, and his dismissal after 80 minutes was celebrated with quite some relish. Which, as Marina Beccuti pointed out in her article at www.toro.it, may serve as a warning to Angelo Ogbonna, who has still not given a straight answer to the Juventus question.

In the aforementioned interview, it was put to him that Toro could win the derby and he laughed. As one can imagine, reaction to this gaffe was swift and brutal. Facebook, for example, lit up like a Christmas tree, with many angry comments, of which perhaps the most eloquent went approximately as follows (my translation):

“More than 10 years with us. Vice-Captain. And when a journalist hypothesises a remote chance of winning the derby you burst out laughing? "… but for the people it’s important." GOD! SURELY IT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU TOO! Enough, for me it's over. Our colours are not to be mocked by anyone. Good luck for a lousy career.”

There has certainly been growing appreciation and support for Guillermo Rodriguez’ performances in Ogbonna’s injury- and suspension-enforced absences this season. The figures tell part of the story:

Our record this season to date with Ogbonna in the starting 11:

P 16  W 3  D 5  L 8  F 22  A 29  Pts 14  GD -7

Our record this season to date without Ogbonna in the starting 11:

P 16  W 5  D 8  L 3  F 18  A 15  Pts 23  GD +3

Part of me wonders if Cairo has been telling Ventura to pick Ogbonna when and wherever possible, regardless of Rodriguez’ form, in the hope that his performances improve and his transfer value increases. Problem is, if his poor performances continue the value of the team decreases. Watch the rats mercenaries players leaving sinking ships at Pescara, Palermo and Genoa/Siena when relegation hits them over the next few weeks in order to avoid the €300k Serie B salary cap next season, and think “that could be us”.

Our next home game is, of course the small matter of the derby.  We haven’t won a derby in a generation. We haven’t even scored in one since the 2001/2 season. And there is the nightmarish possibility that they could win the scudetto at the Olimpico. My worst-case scenario: they win the scudetto, their fans invade the pitch to celebrate, we invade the pitch to (shall we say) remonstrate with them, we are handed a points deduction and are relegated as a result. I will be a Napoli supporter when they take on Pescara, as a Napoli victory would (at the time of typing) postpone the seemingly inevitable. As will a Juventino of my acquaintance who told me he won’t attend the derby if Juve can win the scudetto, as he knows that there is violence planned before the game. Lucky the extra stewards drafted in are temps from Manpower, ne? (Local dialect for “innit?”)

***

I said upon winning promotion last May that I would quite happily settle for 17^th in Serie A this season. Fortunately my hair had already turned white and/or fallen out. We’re doing this the hard way. Rumours of my allegiance changing to Duck Farm Chieri women’s volleyball team are not totally untrue. I will be taking more of an interest in them in future, as they are fine athletes and I now have a shirt autographed by four of their players. That said, I was given a signed Ogbonna shirt about a month ago. Will wait until September before deciding what to do with it.

Maratona and Elsewhere #9 : A sickening feeling....like sitting on your balls.

Torino 3-5 Napoli - 30.03.13

@torinoblogger Getting my snorkel and flippers ready. Think they'll tear us a new one tonight.
— Steve Rose (@TorinoSteve) March 30, 2013

It had been raining all day and I was feeling apprehensive, hence the above tweet. Fortunately the rain eased off around six o’clock, so it was possible to be sociable for a little while outside the stadium (a beer, a Borghetti; a quick snifter of Sambuca for those who like the stuff) before making our way inside. There seemed to be a larger crowd than usual, which led to cries of “Dove eravate?!” (“Where were you?!”) from some of the ultras. I have been ever-present in the league at home this season, but my voice hadn’t yet warmed up, so not guilty. It’s fair point, though: fair-weather fans do piss me off. I was there, using the metaphor of freezing my balls off when Gubbio came to town last season in Serie B, while less-committed (and warmer) people stayed at home.

Once inside the stadium, however, it became clear that most of the extra people through the turnstiles were Neapolitans who live in Turin. We have FIAT to thank for the presence in Turin of large numbers of people from the south of Italy. There was a massive post-World War II influx of meridionali, who came to work for the dark side, building the Cinquecento and Seicento. They were not exactly welcomed with open arms. They were considered to be dirty, noisy, lazy, short in stature, and disorganised by northern Italian standards. Indeed, signs could be seen in shops declaring “no dogs or Napuli”.

I knew previously of this immigration from the south but I hadn’t considered the prejudice and stereotyping that must have been associated with it. But it happens. It happens in England, too, where Liverpudlians are considered by some to be (how can I put this discreetly?) light-fingered and Yorkshiremen are careful with money. In Italy we have the Genovesi inventing the transparent fridge door, to make sure the light’s off so they know they aren’t wasting electricity, and anything badly constructed was made by a Bergamasco.

So, in the minutes leading up to kick-off, when virtually everybody was jumping - “chi non salta bianconero è!” – I was happy; we had a stadium united. But then it was “Odio Napoli” and “Napoli, vaffanculo!” which made my heart sink a little. That said, there was no Venaria-style “let Vesuvius erupt”, as I confidently predicted in M&E#8.

There are some people in Italian football for whom I have a soft spot. Napoli’s president Aurelio De Laurentiis is one of them. He has a passion for football, a sense of theatre and a sense of humour, and he’s an outspoken critic of the supine / cretinous / corrupt football authorities in this country. I would swap him for Cairo at a stroke. I also like Mazzari’s team; they play some good stuff. I don’t, however, like Mazzari’s players as individuals. They strike me as cowards. Their club President may be from a family of film-makers, but their job is to play football, not to be actors. They are underhand in terms of making or feigning off-the-ball kicks and elbows when nobody in a high-visibility yellow shirt is watching, and they display complete and utter contempt when a decision is given in favour of the other team. It saddens me to think that these guys are probably the only ones with even an outside chance of preventing Venaria Town from being awarded another scudetto. No class. If we could afford Cavani or Hamsik and there was a chance of them joining us, however, I would probably be able to hold my nose and forgive them: “he’s a flawed genius, that’s all!”

I can forgive them a little for showing dissent when the referee is a buffoon, though. It’s becoming a little tiresome talking about incompetent officiating, so from now on I’ll try to praise a particular official if he (I don’t think there are any female officials in Serie A; I could be wrong) does something praiseworthy. Step forward Andrea Gervasoni who, as the 5th official on the goal-line, awarded us a penalty that referee Danilo Giannoccaro wasn’t going to give. Please see Carlo Quaranta’s excellent article at http://www.toro.it/press/view/2735 for an in-depth critique of Giannoccaro’s performance.

That penalty (converted by Jonathas) and the Meggiorini’s goal soon afterwards that gave us the lead for two minutes were celebrated with such gusto that an impartial observer might have thought something important had happened. Perhaps it had? We belong at this level. That moment felt like “HEARD YOU MISSED US! WE’RE BACK!”. And, while we’re not yet mathematically safe, there is confidence that we can stay where we feel we belong.

The game was remarkable in many ways, though for most of those one would require the services of an idiot savant. It was the first time since 1993 that all three Toro strikers scored in the same match. That’s a pretty damning statistic. It was the first time Barreto had scored a Serie A goal for yonks - the yonk is the S.I. unit of goalscoring time and is equivalent to 144 donkey’s years - and the Meggiorini scored against a team not called Inter. It was the first game Torino had ever lost 3-5. I saw a foul throw in Italy penalised for the first time. Il gattone saved his first penalty in a Torino shirt, which was also the first penalty Napoli have conceded this season, whereas we are two away from equalling the all-time record…

… and a certain Blerim Dzemaili scored his first Serie A hat-trick against his former club, the first of which at least would ordinarily have landed in Row Z . He once played for a club called  'Young Fellows Juventus' in Zurich, strangely enough. Glöckner von scheisse.

Antonio Conte was allegedly in attendance, too. Why? Hopefully planning for a first derby defeat in a generation – not that he has any previous in match-fixing – but perhaps he was taking his cat for a walk. (It’s on his head.) His presence didn’t go unnoticed. References to excrement come as standard. Online translation services are available should the reader need assistance with “bastardo parruccato pluricondannato”. That’s what I shout when I hear his voice on the radio.

Any other business? We’re becoming adept at throwing away leads. We lose concentration after restarts: we conceded two minutes after half-time and two minutes after taking the lead. We have no ball out of defence if we have nine defending a corner and they have two guys on Cerci. He was very poor against Napoli, by the way. The most energy I saw him expend all night was when he ran to the Meggiorini to celebrate the third goal. I hope it’s not a case of blood rushing to his ego after his debut for the national side. We missed Brighi in midfield and must get his contract sorted prestissimo. Brighi would not have allowed Dzemaili as much space as Basha did. It was nice to see a different formation, but I would have liked to have seen Bakic (of whom I’ve heard great things) for once instead of Beavis. I mean, Vives.

A bittersweet evening, insomma. Eight goals, much incident, generous applause from the Maratona to the players and vice versa, but no points. A bit like sitting on your balls: you feel sick, but you’re glad you have them. Glad I was there to see it.

Steve is a season ticket holder who moved to Torino in 2009 after meeting a Torinese lady called Raffaella on Facebook - you can follow Steve on Twitter here.