Valentino Mazzola

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Valentino Mazzola
Personnel
birthday January 26, 1919
place of birth Cassano d'Adda ,  Italy
date of death May 4, 1949
Place of death Turin ,  Italy
size 170 cm
position Half-striker
Juniors
Years station
1933-1936 GS Tresoldi
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1936-1938 GS Tresoldi
1938-1939 Alfa-Romeo Milan
1939-1942 AC Venice 61 0(12)
1942-1949 AC Turin 195 (109)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1942-1949 Italy 12 00(4)
1 Only league games are given.

Valentino Mazzola (born January 26, 1919 in Cassano d'Adda , † May 4, 1949 in Turin ) was an Italian football player .

Valentino Mazzola is one of the most important players in Italian football history and was the great star of the 1940s. As captain and centerpiece of the Grande Torino , the legendary successful team of AC Turin , he won five national championships and once the cup .

In 1949, Mazzola and most of his teammates were killed in the tragic Superga plane crash .

youth

Valentino Mazzola was born in 1919 in Cassano d'Adda , a small town near Milan . The boy, who came from a humble background, lost his father at an early age and had to drop out of school at the age of eleven to work as an apprentice baker . He later found work in a factory and in those years joined the GS Tresoldi football club , which was based in his neighborhood.

At the age of 18, the talented footballer caught the attention of a neighbor who managed to get Mazzola a job as a mechanic at Alfa Romeo in Milan. This enabled him to play in the third division of the company's Werkself.

Club career

AC Venice (1940 to 1942)

When the Second World War broke out in autumn 1939, the then 20-year-old was drafted into the Italian Navy and stationed in Venice . Legend has it that Mazzola got a trial training session at AC Venice from an officer after a game as a center forward of the team of his naval command . There he knew how to convince and his future coach Giuseppe Girani made Mazzola a player of the club from January 1, 1940. Only a few weeks later, on March 31, he made his debut in the championship game against Lazio Rome (0-1).

Mazzola was an exceptional athlete and quickly rose to become a top performer. Fast as an arrow and equipped with the endurance of a long-distance runner at the same time, he could be found on the entire field of play. His tackles made him an extremely useful player in defense , but he was equally efficient as an outside runner . Not infrequently had three times Mazzola change position within a game before finally settling on the position of the half-striker firmly played, supported by his congenial partner Ezio Loik . In June 1941 Venice surprisingly won the Coppa Italia and finished at the end of the following year ( 1941-42 ) sensational third place in the Serie A .

In the meantime, Mazzola had developed into one of the strongest players in Italy and attracted the desires of other clubs. When Ferruccio Novo , President of AC Turin , wanted to sign him, he was already faced with an oral agreement with Juventus Turin , according to which the offensive artist would move there. For the transfer fee of 1.25 million lire , however, the agreement was canceled and Mazzola and Loik signed with AC Turin. The intended secrecy of this deal did not succeed, however, and when Venice - still with Mazzola and Loik - ran up against AC Turin, the disappointed Tifosi began to mock them and insult the sale .

AC Turin (1942 to 1949)

In July 1942 Mazzola and Loik finally moved to AC Turin. At the time, President Novo did not know that he had made the business of his life with this transfer, because the two newcomers made a very good team into an almost unbeatable. In the 1942/43 season , Turin won a double (championship and cup) and humiliated one opponent after the other: Juventus lost 1: 5, AC Milan 0: 5 and Venice 0: 4. Mazzola made a significant contribution to the double season with eleven goals in 30 games. In 1944, Serie A was prematurely terminated due to the war and there was no regular game operation for two years.

But AC Turin was not impressed by this forced break. In 1946 the first post-war season came to an end and Turin won the Scudetto by 13 points over Inter Milan . Granata's recipe for success was the previously unknown World Cup system in Italy , which the Hungarian coach Ernő Erbstein had introduced. The team would also win the next three championships and go down in history as Grande Torino . Nobody had dominated Italian football as overwhelmingly as AC Turin in the 1940s. For six years in a row they didn't lose a single home game at Stadio Filadelfia (93 games in total). The sporting superiority of those years was also reflected in the goal statistics, between 1945 and 1949 Turin scored a total of 483 goals, which were only faced with 165 goals. By participating in numerous international friendly matches, the team achieved the status of a continental heavyweight even before the founding of European club competitions.

Nobody stood for this unique hit series like Valentino Mazzola. As a captain , he was a born leader and a combative role model, who always succeeded in spurring his teammates on to top performance in critical situations. When the team had a bad day or fell behind, Mazzola rolled up the sleeves of his jersey in the middle of the second half to give the signal to attack . In addition to organizing the attacking game, the filigree playmaker was also not too bad for defensive tasks and was ahead of his time with this style of play. In addition, Mazzola remained dangerous and as the top scorer of the 1946/47 season (29 hits), he underpinned his importance for the club. "He earned twice as much as his team-mates because they wanted it that way," said President Novo, underscoring the team's appreciation. At the time, Mazzola was a superstar and with his blond curly hair, muscular torso and engaging smile, he was also considered a symbol of the rebirth of Italy after the war off the field. Much like the great players of the 1930s Giuseppe Meazza and Silvio Piola , Mazzola was also a sought-after advertising star.

Career in the national team

The Second World War and his early death prevented a glamorous international career for Mazzola, who only made twelve international appearances (four goals). He made his debut in the national jersey on April 5, 1942 against Croatia (4-0), two weeks later he scored his first goal against Spain (4-0).

When the national team started playing again after the end of the war, the players of AC Turin formed their core. The fact that in the friendly against Hungary (3-2) on May 11, 1947, ten national players came from the series champions, shows how influential these were . Mazzola's last international match was the 3-1 away win against Spain in Madrid on March 27, 1949 .

After the Superga tragedy, a completely redesigned Italian rump eleven traveled to the World Cup in Brazil in 1950 , and they were eliminated in the preliminary round. The death of the professionals of AC Turin threw the Italian national team back several years, which had to start a completely new beginning in the following years.

The Superga disaster

With a 1-1 draw at AS Bari on April 24, 1949, AC Turin was already the champions five rounds before the end of the season. A short time later, Ferruccio Novo agreed a friendly against Benfica in Lisbon on May 3rd . Mazzola insisted on traveling to Portugal despite being unable to play due to an illness. On May 4th, the team flew back to Italy. Bad weather prevailed when approaching Turin. The pilot did not notice that he was pushing the machine too far down and the Fiat G.212 crashed with all 31 occupants on Turin's local mountain Superga , just below the cathedral of the same name.

In this accident, which went down in football history as the Tragedia di Superga , 18 players, five club officials, three journalists and the four crew members lost their lives. 30-year-old Valentino Mazzola was among the victims. From the overpowering team of AC Turin ( Grande Torino ) only one player ( Sauro Tomà ) survived that day because he had not traveled due to an injury. The time of the Grande Torino was over and it wasn't until 1976 that the club was able to win a Scudetto again .

family

Mazzola's first child, Sandro , was born on November 8, 1942, shortly after Valentino arrived in Turin . On February 1, 1945, his wife gave him a second son, Ferruccio , who was named after Ferruccio Novo, the club's president at the time. Around 1946, Mazzola's marriage fell apart. However, he remarried and was awarded custody of Sandro. The training sessions that Mazzola gave his son would later pay off, as Sandro also became a professional footballer and played for Inter Milan and for the Italian national team. Ferruccio also became a football player and later a coach until he passed away on May 7, 2013.

Quotes

  • "You can always win in football as long as you change."
  • "Football will always be a game with eleven men."
  • "The greatest Italian player of all time was Valentino Mazzola." ( Enzo Bearzot , Italian national coach 1982)
  • “He alone is half the team. The other half are the rest of us together. ”(Team-mate Mario Rigamonti ).

various

  • José Altafini , the top player for AC Milan and Brazil for many years , was called “Mazzola” when referring to Valentino.
  • At the age of ten, Mazzola rescued Andrea Bonomi from drowning in a river. Bonomi later became a defender at AC Milan .

successes

Web links

Commons : Valentino Mazzola  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Addio Ferruccio Mazzola, fratello "contro" del mitico Sandro , accessed on May 8, 2013 (Italian)
personal data
SURNAME Mazzola, Valentino
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Cassano d'Adda
DATE OF DEATH May 4, 1949
Place of death Turin