Walter Mazzarri started the week of the Derby della Mole with a pilgrimage. The 56-year-old has been in the Torino job for little more than a month. But this was already his second visit to the Basilica at Superga to pay his respects to the Grande Torino side that perished in a tragic plane crash in 1949.
Mazzarri spoke about feeling a “fire inside” while contemplating what had happened on that hill overlooking Turin. Inspiration must be drawn from the greatness of that team this Sunday lunchtime when they play Juventus in the ground named in their memory.
No club lives in the past quite like Torino. On Tuesday, Mazzarri held an open training session at the Filadelfia. More than a 1000 fans attended, each of them taking in their surroundings. This is where the Grande Torino used to play. For decades this hallowed piece of ground was neglected. Bringing the club back here and rebuilding a new training centre on the site where so much history was made goes down as an excellent move by Urbano Cairo. It’s hard not to lose yourself in the nostalgia.
The here and now is pretty good too, though. Torino look like a credible candidate for a Europa League spot, and while Mazzarri still cuts a very dour figure on the sideline he has already whipped up plenty of enthusiasm in his short spell with the Granata. To the uninitiated, it might not look like a lot has changed over the last six week. Torino have climbed a place in the table. They are still two points off seventh spot. Samp are five points ahead of them in sixth - the same margin as when Mazzarri’s predecessor Sinisa Mihajlovic got the chop - but then it’s also true the Blucerchiati no longer have a game in hand.
What motivated Torino to sack Mihajlovic, then? After all, the Toro were not in danger of relegation and still found themselves very much in the mix to return to continental competition. An explanation isn’t too hard to find even if Mihajlovic felt aggrieved that he didn’t get one from Cairo himself when news of his dismissal broke. “…He should have said Cairo could have sacked me two months earlier and didn’t” was Cairo’s brutally honest response.
From the Torino president’s perspective, Mihajlovic was simply not meeting expectation. After finishing ninth last season, the hope was the Granata would push on. Other rivals for the Europa League, like Fiorentina, were scaling back. Samp and Atalanta lost half a team. And although Torino sold Marco Benassi and Davide Zappacosta, they still left the impression of being stronger for it. La Gazzetta dello Sport voted their summer transfer window the second best after Milan’s. It seemed certain that, by upgrading in goal and across the backline, a team with Andrea Belotti up front now had the balance to do some damage. Torino's wage bill is also now the seventh highest in Serie A.
The campaign started promisingly enough with a five-game unbeaten run, but the defence still shipped goals and the attack wasn’t as lethal as a year ago. Torino dropped points often in comical circumstances to relegation fodder like Verona, Crotone and SPAL and ended 2017 with more draws (20) than any team in Europe’s top five leagues. Yet Mihajlovic still felt harshly done by, and lost his job after a cup quarter-final defeat by Juventus marred by a VAR decision against Torino. In Mihajlovic's defence, the Granata had knocked Roma out in the last round and had recently defeated Lazio away in the league. In all they lost just four times all season in Serie A under the Serb. Flaky but hard to beat nonetheless.
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Then again, it’s also true Torino were four points worse off than at the same stage a year ago and had won just twice at home in the league, all at considerable expense. Cairo had backed Mihajlovic in the transfer market. You get the feeling he wouldn’t have signed M’baye Niang had the Serb not insisted on it. But Cairo satisfied Mihajlovic, making the mercurial Frenchman a club record signing. Imagine the owner's disappointment, then, when Niang scored just once until Mazzarri’s arrival. Ironically enough the Turin edition of Il Corriere della Sera claimed it was Niang and Adem Ljajic, another of Mihajlovic’s pupils, who were most in favour of a change of manager.
Which isn’t to say Mihajlovic had lost the dressing room. When word got out that Torino had sacked him in the early hours of January 4, Belotti led a delegation of players to the Principi di Piemonte hotel where Mihajlovic had based himself over the course of his 18-month spell in Turin. The fact Mihajlovic never bought a house and moved permanently to Turin - his family still live in Rome - is one of the reasons the fans never truly accepted him as one of them. And that’s despite Mihajlovic’s ability to talk a good game and make a genuine effort and show great respect for Torino's history.
Hiring Mazzarri was not an overnight decision. Contact was already made at the beginning of December and time is always needed to reach an agreement with Mazzarri. The Livornese is renowned for specific, pedantic contract demands and Torino had to extricate him from his existing deal with Watford, worth €2.5m a year. His impact has been instant, though. Torino have already won more home games under Mazzarri (3) than they did under Mihajlovic this season (2). They’re unbeaten since he took over and were very impressive in the 1-1 draw away to Samp. Mazzarri’s players did everything he asked of them. So much so he said it was like playing PlayStation on the sidelines.
The team takes fewer risks than it did in Mihajlovic’s time at the club. Only four teams were conceding more shots on target than Torino when Mazzarri took over. The improvement in this regard is notable. Torino look fitter too. The players didn’t get much of a winter break. But those double sessions are paying off. Just look at the goal Belotti scored in the weekend’s win against Udinese. He ran from one end of the pitch to the other.
Belotti finally seems to have put his fitness problems behind him. He paid dearly for rushing back from a bad knee injury to play in Italy’s ill-fated World Cup play-off. Shortly afterwards he relapsed. For a striker who relies so much on hard running and physicality - “he reminds me of an early Cavani,” Mazzarri says - Belotti’s body has to be right for him to be at his best.
The timing of his return to form couldn't be better. Belotti always scores against Juve at the Grande Torino and famously called time on Gigi Buffon’s 974-minute unbeaten record two years ago. Niang also looks like a different player now back under Mazzarri's wing. He scored twice in his first three games under Mazzarri. As for Iago Falque, he continues to stake his case as Torino’s Player of the Year.
It all makes for a very competitive derby indeed. At least that’s what Torino are hoping for. And Mazzarri’s former club Napoli.
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