The tribute had barely begun at the Allianz Stadium on Sunday evening when part of the Curva Sud turned away from the pitch and started singing songs for their own departed heroes. Names from Juventus’s own past, among them Gaetano Scirea, Andrea Fortunato and the late club owner Gianni Agnelli, rose from the home end while the rest of the ground stood still.
The response inside the stadium was immediate. Tens of thousands of other spectators broke into applause to drown out the singing, and the tribute continued to its finish.
In an official statement issued after the match, the club described the disruption as a “lack of respect” and delivered an unusually blunt rebuke of a section of its own fanbase.
“No rivalry can justify a lack of respect during a minute’s silence,” the club said.
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“Honouring the memory of those being remembered and coming together in remembrance during moments of commemoration is a shared responsibility that transcends allegiances and colours.”
Sarri points at a generation
Atalanta head coach Maurizio Sarri, asked about the scenes afterwards, put the behaviour down to fans too young to know who they were being asked to remember.
“A bad feeling, perhaps done by a generation that doesn’t realise what Mazzola achieved, regardless of the shirt he wore,” Sarri told reporters. “Paying tribute to such a figure is the least we can do.”
The subtext at the Allianz was hard to miss. Mazzola spent his entire 17-year playing career at Inter Milan, Juventus’s fiercest rival, winning four Serie A titles and two European Cups with the Nerazzurri and scoring 158 goals in 565 appearances for them.
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A name that carries the Superga disaster
Mazzola died on Saturday, 19 September, at the age of 83, Inter announced. Italian football’s mourning has been for one of its most decorated figures and for a name that carries one of the sport’s deepest scars.
His father, Valentino Mazzola, was captain of the Grande Torino side that was wiped out in the Superga air disaster on 4 May 1949, when their plane crashed into a hillside outside the city and killed the entire team. Sandro was six years old.
He would go on to win the 1968 European Championship with Italy, reach the 1970 World Cup final, and score 22 goals in 70 international appearances.
Inter, in their own tribute, called him “one of the greatest footballers in history. Not only in the history of the Nerazzurri.”
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Ten points from five
On the pitch, Francisco Conceição opened the scoring in the 28th minute and Bremer added the second in the 77th, lifting Juventus to 10 points from five Serie A matches.
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