History
The Turin derby was first played on 13 January 1907. It was also the first competitive match of Torino after its founding on 3 December 1906. The rivalry stems from the fact that Torino was founded through a merger of Football Club Torinese and a group of Juventus dissidents, led by major financier Alfred Dick. It is said that prior to the first derby, Dick was locked inside the changing room, causing him to miss the game and having to listen to updates via players and staff.
Since then, the derby has not been played in Serie A thirteen times: twelve due to Torino being in Serie B, and once after Juventus were relegated following the 2006 Italian football scandal. In addition to the derby against the Granata, the Bianconeri have played many derbies in the top flight with other city teams that no longer exist such as R.S. Ginnastica Torino, Sport Club Audace Torino and Football Club Pastore. In the first two editions of the Italian football championship, the original derbies of Turin were the ones played between Torinese, Ginnastica Torino and Internazionale Torino, before the latter merged with Torinese in 1900.
Before World War II, the rivalry between the two clubs came to represent a class divide in the Piedmont region. The fans of Torino originally represented the proletariat, while Juventus the bourgeoisie. However, with the mass migration to Turin, a major industrial center of northern Italy, in the 1960s and 1970s, the social difference had already diminished considerably. Many blue-collar workers arrived from southern Italy and took up employment with the Agnelli family, the owners of FIAT; thus, they started to see Juventus as "the team of the boss" or the "team of Fiat", and became fans. Torino would stand to represent the "original" spirit of Piedmont, or the purest Torinesità and to this day, it draws its supporters from a predominantly local fanbase, compared to Juventus, which enjoys widespread support even outside of Italy.[9][10] Today, the differences remain, even if they are less prominent, due to Torino regularly teetering between Serie A and Serie B since the second half of the 1990s.[11]
As of 28 February 2023, Juventus have won the derby 110 times and Torino have won it 73 times. Despite the overall results of the derby generally in favor of Juventus, historically, there have been periods where Torino have prevailed; between 1912 and 1914, in the space of three encounters, Torino submerged Juventus under a heavy "coat" of 23 goals—in which Juventus suffered its heaviest defeat in history, an 0–8 result on 17 November 1912, and especially during the 1940s, thanks to the team led by Valentino Mazzola, known as the Grande Torino. The end of the twenties signaled a period of early dominance of Juventus, who had just passed under the Agnelli, and left their rivals with only three victories in twenty matches;[12] subsequently, the Superga tragedy of 1949 and the consequent technical impoverishment of Torino, was followed by a period more favourable for Juventus in the 1950s, culminating in the derby of 20 April 1952, won 6–0.
The 1970s witnessed the revival of Torino, when Juventus remained without a win in the derby for nearly six years (from December 1973 to March 1979) and Torino established a record of 4 wins in a row in a single championship (1975–76). Coinciding with Torino's economic difficulties (especially at the end of the 1990s), Juventus inflicted heavy defeats (5–0 of 3 December 1995). Recent history has seen a marked dominance of Juventus, so much so that Torino's 2–1 victory on 26 April 2015 was their first derby success in twenty years.[13]
