The error boat trip

As we have already told here, in Hanged for football, specifically in the history of the Torino, during the decade of the 40, Torino dominated the European football amply, that team was known as the “Grande Torino”. In 1949 the team suffered an accident on the hill of Superga, in what became known as the tragedy of Superga. All the passengers on the plane died, all the team of “Grande Torino”. Resulting that 10 of the 18 components of that team, they were in the Italian national team, so the blow was tremendous, mental and athletically. For this reason, the components of the new Italian team, decided to travel by boat to Brazil to play the World Cup 1950.

Can you imagine crossing the Atlantic, from Italy and on a steamship from 1950?. The players concentrated in Rome, and then travel to Naples, where they would embark on the ship Sises, that covered the Naples line – Santos, heading to the South American country. During the long journey on the ship, the Italians, they made a stopover in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. There, they played a preparation match between them, gathering a crowd of locals wishing to see the Italian players. The rest of the training sessions had to be carried out on the deck of the ship., where most of the balls went to the sea, with the consequent problems of physical and tactical preparation.

The trip was long, complicated and exhausting. All this, coupled with the loss of 10 of the members of the selection, made Italy arrive as champion of the World Cups 1934 Y 1938, will fall in the first round of the tournament, although I would get a creditable seventh place, that given the circumstances that surrounded them in this World Cup, We could say that it was not bad at all.