The car factory FIAT and the football club Juventus F.C. has for many Italian families over generations been a solid unit borne of faithful loyalty. It also pleases the Bianchi family, who live in the village of Gabiano Monferrato – a little south-east of the city of Turin, where Italy’s most winning football club and largest industrial group have their home ground.
Juventus – Latin name for youth
Sport Club Juventus was formed in 1897 by young Latin students who wanted to create a sports club in the growing industrial city of Turin. Due to the young age of the founders, the name logically fell on Sport Club Juventus, which means youth in Latin. A few years later, the name was changed to Football Club Juventus, as eventually only football was played at the club. The club already won the first national championship in 1905, after which more than 20 years had to pass before the next one was won. Thus, it was only in 1923 with the Agnelli family and not least Edoardo Agnelli (1882-1935) commitment as president that the club really became a power factor in Italian and international football. The all-important difference was that the club could now buy the very best players, both in Italy and from abroad.
FIAT – the life’s work of the Agnelli family
The car factory “Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino” (FIAT) was founded by Giovanni Agnelli – Edoardo’s father – in 1899 and the factory quickly became one of Italy’s strongest growth engines. Many southern Italians and Sicilians traveled to northern Italy and the car factory for work and better living conditions. Trains that went from southern Italy to Turin and other places in the north were called “Il treno della speranza” (the train of hope) because they were filled with poor people who hoped for work and prosperity. The Fiat Group’s activities were originally focused around the industrial production of cars, locomotives and railcars, aircraft, military vehicles and agricultural machinery, but after World War II Fiat also invested in a wide range of other industries, real estate and financial services, so that today Fiat is Italy’s largest group. The group has, especially in recent decades, had enormous success with the development and sale of robots for many different industries. Today, the Fiat Group has activities in 61 countries through 1,063 companies with more than 223,000 employees, of whom 111,000 work outside Italy. The vast majority of the group’s employees, both in Italy and across the globe, are naturally also fans of Juventus F.C. It is estimated that the club has one of the world’s largest fan bases.
36 national championships and major European club through decades
It was not until the 1930s that Juventus F.C. seriously manifested itself in Italian top football with as many as five championships in a row (1931-1935). It was also players from “La Juve del Quinquennio” who formed the core of the Italian national team, which in 1934 became world champions for the first time at home and which regained the World Cup title 4 years later in France. Juventus F.C. has a total of 36 national championships and 13 Coppa Italia titles, the most successful club in Italy.Juve has also been very successful in 15 European finals and 3 World Cup finals for club teams club, which won all three European club tournaments: Eurocup for Champions (1985 and 1996), European Cup Winners’ Cup (1977, 1990 and 1993).It should also be mentioned that Juventus F.C. with 8 Champions League and Europa Cup championship finals is surpassed only by four clubs that have played in more finals, namely Real Madrid C.F., A.C. Milan, FC Bayern Munich and FC Barcelona.
La Juve dei danisi
The Italian big club also has many supporters in Denmark. This is due, among other things, to that several top Danish players have represented the club in a distinguished way. After the 1948 Olympics, where Denmark won bronze after a 5-3 victory over Italy, several of the best national team players – John Angelo Hansen (1948-1954 – 124 goals in 187 games), Carl Aage Præst (1949-1956 – 51 goals in 232 games) and Karl Aage Hansen (1950-1953 – 37 goals in 87 games) – bought by Juventus F.C. It was thus logical that the “Juve team” at the beginning of the 1950s was nicknamed “La Juve dei danisi”. All three players achieved legend status and Carl Aage Præst is still today the foreign player who has played the most Serie A matches for the Torino club. It should also be mentioned that Denmark’s best player of all time – Michael Laudrup – has played for Juventus F.C. (1985-1989 – 16 goals in 102 games) before his career continued in the two big Spanish clubs: FC Barcelona and Real Madrid C.F.
Calciopoli – a blemish on a credible big club
Juventus F.C. has, like the vast majority of Serie A clubs, also been hit by downturns and scandals. The biggest is by far the “Calciopoli scandal”, where the Italian sports newspaper “La Gazzetta dello Sport” published a series of articles about audio recordings in 2006. The recordings were intercepted telephone conversations, which showed a clear connection between the selection of referees for the best Italian football series and board chairmen and sporting directors of several of Italy’s best football clubs, among them ACF Fiorentina, S.S. Lazio, Reggina, A.C. Milan and especially Juventus F.C. The accusation was that the clubs’ top managers had influenced the results in Serie A by selecting the referees for their own and other clubs’ matches and that the strategist behind the scandal was the director of Juventus F.C., Luciano Moggi. The civil trial related to the Calciopoli scandal became a protracted affair, but Juventus F.C. was forcibly relegated to Serie B already in the 2006-2007 season and subsequently stripped of the national championships in the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 seasons. The Calciopoli scandal became a blemish not only on Juventus F.C., but also on top Italian football in general. Among Juventus fans, there is still today great anger at the verdicts, as it is believed that Juventus F.C. largely alone ended up having to be appointed as the scapegoat for a corrupt system.
The hereditary enemies from Milan have “borrowed” the scudetto
After the Calciopoli scandal, Juventus regained F.C. very quickly past dominance in boot country. As early as the 2011-2012 season, Juventus won the national title followed by an impressive 9 championships in a row. In the last four seasons, the arch enemies from Milan – AC Milan (2021-2022) and Inter F.C. (2020-2021 and 2023-2024) as well as Napoli (2022-2023) however “borrowed” the title from Juventus F.C. This season it also looks like a close race for the title between the top clubs: Inter F.C., S.S.C. Napoli and Juventus F.C.
On Saturday evening, together with the Agnelli and Bianchi families and 41,000 fans, I will take a seat at the Stadio Allianz in Turin when “La Vecchia Signora” has a home game against S.S. Lazio from Rome. Forza Juve!
Sources:
- Juventus Football Club – https://www.juventus.com/en/
- Birgit Schönau: La Fidanzata – Juventus, Turin and Italy (Berenberg Verlag GmbH, 2018).
- Herbie Sykes: Juve! – 100 years of an Italian Football Dynasty (Yellow Jersey Press, 2021).
- Adam Digby: Juventus: A History in Black and White (Ockley Books Ltd., 2015).
