Team Focus: Torino Rolling Back the Years Under Ventura

Supporting Torino is often considered an act of remembrance. Many fans live for the past, not for the present. Most days simply don’t compare with yesteryear. Recall, for instance, the romance and the tragedy of the Grande Torino, the genius of Gigi Meroni, their last Scudetto back in 1976, and the early `90s under Emiliano Mondonico when they finished third, got to the final of the UEFA Cup and won the Coppa Italia. Memories like those induce a strong sense of nostalgia. So too does the Filadelfia, their old ground and Italy’s most romantic, left crumbling by the local authority.

Right here, right now, though, you could be forgiven for thinking the Granata had managed to turn back time to the good old days. Sunday’s 2-0 win away to Udinese, their first at the Stadio Friuli in 29 years, was Torino’s third in four games in Serie A. It meant they climbed to seventh in the table. To put that into some kind of perspective, Torino haven’t been this high so far into a campaign since the winter of 1993. Seven points better off than they were at this stage last season, they are the league’s most improved side after Roma and Genoa [+8].

Quite understandably, you might argue, there have been calls for Giampiero Ventura, the veteran coach who got Torino back into Serie A just over a year ago, and the club’s director of sport Gianluca Petrachi to be offered new contracts. “Just don’t say for another three years otherwise the president will fall off his chair,” Ventura joked. Owner Urbano Cairo appears inclined to heed them even if “our seventh place shouldn’t make us do Pindaric flights.”

Torino if you recall only survived on the penultimate day of last season and it was clear that in order to establish themselves in Serie A as something other than a perennial relegation battler a new direction was required. In most of these situations, of course, the owner nearly always sacks the manager and starts afresh. Not so in Torino’s case. Towards the end of the 2012-13 campaign, Cairo had noticed a change in Ventura. His coach compromised on his principles. He had recognised that the 4-2-4 so dear to his heart simply wasn’t working. He was big enough to admit that it didn’t suit the players at his disposal. A change to 3-5-2, the Serie A default setting, did though.

Encouraged by it, Cairo backed his coach. A mini revolution took place over the summer without Ventura losing his head. They drew a line under the first cycle of their working relationship - promotion and keeping Torino up - and embarked on another. This really was the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Talismanic captain and striker Rolando Bianchi was let go. Angelo Ogbonna, the Italy international, arguably Torino’s best player and the next in line for the armband, was sold to rivals Juventus for €13m.

And in a departure from other years Cairo gave nearly all that money to Petrachi to reinvest in the transfer market. Relative to their objectives, Torino bought quite well.

You can query the signing of error-prone goalkeeper Daniele Padelli on a free from Udinese as a replacement for Jean-Francois Gillet following his implication in the Calcioscommesse scandal and subsequent suspension. But gambles on the likes of ball-playing centre-back Nikola Maksimovic, the neat and tidy tempo-setting midfielder Alexander Farnerud and the oggetto misterioso Omar El Kaddouri, a playmaker beginning to realise the potential he showed at Brescia, have started to pay off.

If the success of those signings was difficult to call back in the autumn, that of former Juventus academy graduate Ciro Immobile, a co-ownership deal done with Genoa, was less so. True, he had endured a difficult year at Marassi. But then so too did everyone. Still fresh in the mind were the 28 goals he had scored as he helped get Pescara promoted under Zdenek Zeman the season before last. There was a bright young marksman in there somewhere. Ventura knew that and would bring the best out of him, just as he had Alessio Cerci at Pisa and then on their reunion at Torino last season.

It’s been fun watching this team come together over the last four months. Torino have been involved in the most entertaining games of the current campaign in Serie A. Were it not for a series of injuries and a number of injustices they’d be even higher up the table.

Two-nil up against Milan with three minutes go, they were controversially pegged back to 2-2. Beaten 1-0 by Juventus in the Derby della Mole, Paul Pogba’s clincher should have been ruled out for offside. One-nil down at Samp, they went 2-1 up only to concede an equaliser in the 93rd minute. Two-nil up again the following week, this time at Inter and with a man advantage, they went 3-2 down yet levelled the scores in the 90th minute.

Next it was Napoli who got the better of them, claiming a 2-0 victory at San Paolo, though only via a pair of dubious penalties. At Livorno, three days later, they were 2-0 up then 3-2 down but restored parity in the 87th minute. You get the picture.

Until a month or so ago, Torino were playing what can only be described as heart-attack football: great for the neutral, but not so great for their supporters’ health. Since then, however, things have stabilised. The defence that let in 55 goals last season has tightened up - Torino have not conceded more than one in each of their last six games and have kept back-to-back clean sheets - allowing the attack, arguably the most livewire in Serie A, to win matches for them.

Immobile and Cerci have supplied 53.8% of Torino’s goals this season, combining for 14 in the league, the same total as Juventus’ strike partnership of Carlos Tevez and Fernando Llorente. Not since the days of Paolo Pulici and Francesco Graziani, the Granata’s Scudetto winning forward line 37 years ago, have they had such a prolific pairing up front.

Torino’s second goal on Sunday is what they’re all about. It came from the right where, incidentally, 38% of their attacks have come down this season - no side has had fewer attacking touches down the left than they have (29%). Cerci released Matteo Darmian, who crossed for Immobile to head beyond Udinese `keeper Zeljko Brkic.

While Torino might sound lopsided, there’s actually a great variety to their game. That’s demonstrated in where their goals have come from. Thirteen have arrived from open play, three from counter-attacks, six from set-pieces and four from penalties. They’re deadly in front of goal too. Although not trigger happy [Torino average 12.2 shots per game in Serie A] their shooting is accurate. No fewer than 37.4% of their attempts find the target, a record bettered only by Napoli and Juventus.

The question many people are asking is: can they challenge for a place in the Europa League? Udinese were on exactly the same points as Torino are at this stage last season and managed it. The caveat is that they had to win their last seven games in a row to do so. Competition is fierce. Fiorentina, Inter and even crisis-hit Lazio and Milan are better equipped to do it. Torino’s chances are slim. Yet wouldn’t it be wonderful if they were to return to Europe proper [not the Intertoto Cup] for the first time since their last appearance in the now defunct Cup Winners’ Cup two decades ago?

Do Torino have what it takes to defeat the odds and challenge for a Europa League spot? Let us know in the comments below