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The Silent Conspiracy (Part 1)
The city of Turin, from the soccer point of view, but not only, is divided in two parts, each with its own distinct image, history, characteristics, motivations and charisma. Both entities are however diametrically opposite to each other. On one side we have AC Torino, affectionately known as Il Toro by the fans. A club with a glorious and tragic past which reached its zenith in the post war years with one of the best soccer teams in the history of world football. A plane crash cancelled all this glory just as if the heavens were jealous of having created something so sublime just for mere mortals. Today Il Toro is living a horrific nightmare, relegated to the limbo of the Serie B, the Italian equivalent of England's First Division. On the other hand, the other city club, giu***tus, basks in the limelight created by powerful magnates and politicians from Turin and elsewhere. Turin is not Milan, where two equal teams pay what is their due to use the Giuseppe Meazza Stadium. Turin is not even Rome where the two main city clubs are overtly aided by city politicians and media people. The situation in Rome may seem parochial or medieval in certain aspects, but at least both clubs tend to be on equal footing. In Turin nothing of the sort happens. There reigns a sober, high class silence. But not everyone keeps his mouth shut. There are still those who have still to be hushed up yet. Sometimes, right from the grassroots, a commoner's voice airs the grievances and vents out the crude facts.
Let's go back a few years from now...
giu***tus wanted a stadium of its own. They wanted the Delle Alpi Stadium and wanted to arrive to it with the least economic sacrifice. They had no intention of spending a massive sum. Their intention was to guarantee it with a ridiculous amount of money espescially when one bears in mind the actual price of the site and its surrounding area which has a high potential in property terms. Given the fact that for such a juicy bone there could be two contenders (giu***tus FCand AC Torino) , some strange facts had to take place so as to leave the right of way to the Bianconeri (giu***tus):
1 - The Delle Alpi Stadium is one of the rare cases in Turin's building industry where FIAT, giu***tus' main economic backbone, was not involved in its constuction. Some sort of bad light had to be shed on this stadium so as to induce public opinion to look at it as a waste of public funds. Part of the city press close to giu***tus, divulgated false accusations, exaggerated costs, pointed fingers at the fact that the whole construction was nothing else but a white elephant. Naturally all this was done with the sole purpose of preparing the way for some sort of major reconstruction.
2- Therefore, to make sure that there would not be any kind of opposition towards the project, some sort of pressure had to be made on the city authorities. This psychological pressure started by threatening that they (giu***tus) were going to leave Turin and find another city where to play their home matches. This move payed well. The Bianconeri were handed the running and eventual proceedings of all the advertisment business within the Delle Alpi. Moreover, the city authorities also agreed in paying up for the maintenance! All this was done so as to keep gi*ve from running away from Turin.
3- Another curious fact was how to make giu***tus as the one and only sports club to represent the city of Turin. In a matter of a few weeks or months, the zebra, which always was an unmistakeable gi*ve emblem, was changed into a charging bull (the animal that represents the city on its coat of arms), which has been on AC Torino's official badge since its foundation day.
4 - Just to make sure that AC Torino would never think of trying to poke its nose and make the same pretentions like giu***tus FC about the Delle Alpi, something had to be done. It would have been a major setback for the Bianconeri to have Il Toro nosing about and pretending to participate in an eventual fair auction for the above mentioned football ground. Such a decision by the board members of Torino Calcio would have led to a dramatic increase in price for the Delle Alpi site ... all this was what gi*ve desperately did not want. To make sure that nobody from AC Torino would have the idea or the guts to ask for such a bidding competition, it was important to have gi*ve's rivals controlled by someone from inside the club itself.
What followed was a violent and mud slandering campaign by the Turin press (most of it under FIAT / giu***tus FC influence, direct or indirect. ) against the proprieters of AC Torino. The chairman and his group of directors known also as the Genovesi (Genoese), were kept under constant pressure and attack by the local press. Incessant attacks by the Turin papers and lack of results by the squad itself led to what then looked like the 'triumphal' arrival of Francesco Cimminelli, leader of the Ergom Group of Companies as new major shareholder of AC Torino. This industrial group is a main supplier of FIAT. The entrance of Cimminelli made sure that Ergom were payed by the FIAT group within thirty days of the arrival of the supplies. This happened in sharp contrast with the payments to other suppliers which normally took 90 to 120 days to materialize. Moreover, the Cimminelli group was given a financial backing of about 250 million Euros plus two industrial estates in the south of Italy, which made sure that there was a continuity in production even when there were strikes up in the north. As if all this was not enough, Ergom was given commissions of work by FIAT till 2010 and even later. This might seem to be some kind of conspiracy, there might seem to be some sort of shady agreement behind the scenes. Whatever they might mean, all these industrial chess moves are documented black on white.
As a matter of fact, Cimminelli, known as a very shrewd industrialist, starts to apply a mobbing policy in the running of the club. In a matter of days his relations with the supporters goes from bad to worse. He immediately declares publicly that he's a gi*ve supporter at the helm of Ac Torino just for business purposes. He ridicules and pokes fun at those Toro supporters who out of respect for their fallen heroes, still visit the plane crash site on Superga hill on the outskirts of the city. One has to point out that on this site there is a memorial and a museum dedicated to the Grande Torino.
After about a month Cimminelli does away with the new president Beppe Aghemo and hands over the job to Attilio Romero, who although declaring himself a Torino supporter, he is well known for his involvement in the tragic traffic accident that led to the premature death of Gigi Meroni, Torino's best player of the late sixties. Romero is also a FIAT man, as they call in Turin all those who formed part of the hierarchy of the car manufacturing multinational company. Besides all this, Mr. Cimminelli invites a certain Mr. Pieroni to form part of the new Torino staff as a general manager. This Pieroni, a few months before had been in the limelight because he had a verbal row with the then Torino goalkeeper Luca Bucci. This last decision of Cimminelli had however to be withdrawn because of protests from the supporters.
He moved the club from its original and historical building to an old warehouse in Via del Carmine and instead left the historical office block to his son Simone. In the meantime Mr. Cimminnelli through a press conference anounces the reconstruction of the clubs historical football ground, the Filadelfia Stadium. This press conference, where a lot of attention was given to pomp and flowery speeches, was a publicity event for Cimminelli.
However, problems started to mushroom when it came to building permits regarding the Filadelfia project. According to the architect who designed the project itself, these problems where artfully created on purpose to make sure that the building never started. Cimminelli, however manages to divert attention by obtaining the necessary permits to create a AC Torino club premises by the local council of Borgaro onthe outskirts of Turin. On the masterplan, these premises included nine football pitches, dressing rooms, building areas to house the first team and the youths' sector, forestry and landscaping.
Meanwhile, the Turin local authorities, who back in 1999, come to an agreement with giu***tus' managing director Mr. Giraudo about the sale of the Delle Alpi site, had to make a move to appear as impartial as possible. Thus, after giving away the Delle Alpi to giu***tus for the price of 5 Euros per square metre, when it should have been more like 70 Euros per sq. m, given the going property rates of those times, tries to come up with some sort of equal compromise with AC Torino. Infact it gave Cimminelli's club the old Comunale Stadium in the city centre. This stadium, in the mean time was chosen to host the opening of the 2006 Winter Olympics. Besides all this, the local authorities gave the necessary permission to Cimminelli to build a supermarket on the much debated Filadelfia site.
Due to a belated but effective mass protest by the supporters, the supermarket was moved to an adjacent area, however a housing project's approach road was built, taking away half of the original area of the club's historical football pitch.