The Quiet Revolution At Torino

You might not have noticed, but there’s been a quiet revolution going on in Turin. Not at Juventus who seem to lurch from the sublime to the ridiculous game by game, but across the city at the Olympic Stadium, where Torino have been going about their business impressively in 2013, brushing their off-field dramas aside to put together a run that has taken them ten points clear of the relegation zone.

Amid the transfer and contract sagas of Rolando Bianchi and Angelo Ogbonna, the unsung ‘rest’ of the Granata squad have been steadily gathering points, losing only once since Christmas (at Udinese) and putting together a seven game unbeaten run to start the year with a slow rise up the table.

It hasn’t been spectacular, but then Torino seldom are – their promotion behind a swashbuckling Pescara side was very much based on their defence. It hasn’t been pretty either, no team in Europe can top Torino’s five 0-0s this season – the recent draw with Catania was a particular low point. What it has been, though, is effective.

So what have Giampiero Ventura’s men been doing right? Firstly, and most importantly, if you watch Torino, you’ll notice how well they keep the ball. In the 1-1 draw recently, Torino’s back four completed virtually the same amount of passes between them as the entire Sampdoria team; I’ve been particularly impressed with the fullbacks – D’Ambrosio on the left and Rodriguez on the right.

That possession means the defence are often quite high up the pitch, which in turn means the midfielders can work forward. Although Rolando Bianchi is rightly seen as the main threat, there’s no shortage of chances coming from behind him; witness the shot Cerci ballooned into the stratosphere on Sunday afternoon for how well that can work.

A functioning defence and a functional attack sounds like a recipe for a modicum of success, and indeed it has proved so. There has been some games (the first Derby della Mole of the season, notably) where Torino looked hopelessly out of their depth in their new division but generally, the tight defence keeps them in games and only needing one goal to get something, they quite often get it. At Napoli before Christmas, Torino fell behind early, but through a mixture of doggedness and luck, managed to keep the score at 1-0 until the 92^nd minute when Sansone broke clear and scored an equaliser.

The game against Napoli marked the first time his side had been so forward-thinking, but Ventura has set the team out to do the same thing since then and the results have been positive, most noticeably on the road. No longer do Torino just sit back and try and stop their opposition scoring, they go out to win, and to keep the ball and, in Gazzi and Cerci particularly, there’s some quality in the midfield when they do have possession.

All this good work has been achieved, of course, on something of a shoestring. The problems with Bianchi’s wages tell of a club who are operating close to their financial limit – Rolando has told how much he loves Torino, but the club are unable to offer him anything like the wages he could get elsewhere while, assuming that Angelo Ogbonna will fetch over €10,000,000, it is a question of when and who, rather than if he moves on; Liverpool and Arsenal had scouts watching him on Sunday.

The threat of losing players of the quality of Bianchi and Ogbonna might have proved catastrophic in other seasons, but the current Granata seem to be made of sturdier stuff and have played (and won) many games without both of their figureheads; indeed, Ogbonna has played in fewer than half of Torino’s games this season.

It all bodes quite well for the future; a Torino side capable of staying in Serie A – they may even be safe by the time of the next Derby in March – and building from there. Who knows what they might go on to achieve?

The football of the 2012/13 vintage Torino will not live forever in the memory as other Torino teams of the past, but they may well live another season in Serie A which, all things considered, is triumph enough for now.