Torino Club Focus: Sixth and Rising

Date: 30th January 2014 at 4:33pm
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It seems for much of this season that the steady and quiet climb up the Serie A rankings from Torino has largely gone unnoticed by wider calcio audiences.

In fact for much of the current campaign all of the buzz about the ‘surprise package’ and ‘team to watch out for’ has centred around Hellas Verona.

To be fair to the Mastini, they have been outstanding this season on their Serie A return and have garnered widespread plaudits although some chinks are starting to show in the armour at the Bentegodi after the loss of Jorginho.

Yet while all that hype has been surrounding them, Toro have often gone unnoticed, or so it seems here at TCF, in their exploits this season.

After all this is a team who have lost just once at home all season and even that defeat only came by a single goal against champions Juventus in the Derby della Mole in a game in which the Granata were worthy of getting something.

An average of winning 1.5 points per game has helped the club in their rise to sixth place in the standings and just one point off of Inter who sit on the edge of the top five.

They have also been much easier on the eye to watch this season having dispensed with the outdated 4-2-4 formation that, not entirely without coincidence, saw Torino flirt dangerously close to relegation last year after a solid start.

There were doubts also expressed by myself this season about whether or not Ciro Immobile would be able to cut it and rest assured that if Giampiero Ventura had still persisted with the aforementioned system, he would likely not have been as successful but he has been truly phenomenal.

Calls for him to make up part of Cesare Prandelli’s squad at this summer’s World Cup finals are not entirely without basis in fact.

The 23-year-old is living up to some of the promise that he showed at the Viareggio Cup as a youngster and with Pescara in Serie B and he has now managed 10 goals and two assists in his 15 Serie A starts this campaign.

There are not too many Italian strikers showing that kind of form at the moment and it would be some achievement for Torino to send not one but two players to Brazil.

For Alessio Cerci’s spot with the Azzurri is ensured, so good has he been over the past 18 months or so and his class needs no introduction to fans of Serie A.

Form wise, the club are riding on the crest of an incredible wave at the moment and currently sit in fourth place (level on points with Fiorentina and Roma in third and second respectively) in the Serie A form table based on results in the past eight games.

Consistency has been much welcomed this campaign after the drastic plummet in form towards the tail end of last season but with the club sitting in such a comfortable position, who is there to suggest they cannot go even further?

A top four finish would likely be out of the question but it would be truly incredible if the club managed to bounce back from beating the drop by narrow margins by cracking the top five.

With Inter in the form they are in at the moment, it is certainly not out of the question that the Granata could pip them to the post for a fifth placed finish.

It is not a Nerazzurri of old to be feared. It is a Nerazzurri that other sides should be rubbing their hands at the prospect of coming up against.

The age old criticism of a club fighting it out near the top in an unfamiliar position than many would have predicted is the classic “they will fall away towards the end” but having kept all of their key players during the January window bar Danilo D’Ambrosio and strengthened with Panagiotis Tachtsidis arriving.

Admittedly, Toro picked up points against AC Milan, Roma, Inter and Fiorentina in the opening half of the season all of which came at home but if they can keep their rather solid form up on the road (having managed to hit goals with regularity away from home of late) then cracking that top five is not outside the realms of possibility.

 

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