After winning the C-Prior, Prato followed up with the semi-finals of the Coppa Italia. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 Info This time their opponents are the former giants, Torino.

Founded in 1891, the Torino team was once a true Serie A giant. In the forties of this century, they ushered in a dynasty. At that time, Torino dominated the Apennines year after year, contributing ten of the starting eleven to the Italian national team, and was regarded as the "Turin God Team". This "team of gods" propelled Turin to its zenith, creating the "Greater Turin Era", where the lights of the media and the glory of the championship converged. However, all good fortune turned into tears of grief with a loud bang on Mount Supega.

After the crash, the team's Meritorious Coach Vittorio Pozzo, with great grief, came to identify his children, only to be identified by their height. When he returned to Turin with 31 coffins, the citizens spontaneously formed a procession to see off the children of Turin, and half a million people along the way from the city center to the Palazzo Madama either witnessed or attended the funerals of the warriors. All Italian clubs, as well as many other teams, were represented at the funeral. The Italian government and the Football Association jointly eulogized the Turin players: Turin's soul is immortal, and the bull is forever staring ahead.

That funeral marked the end of a great era in the city of Turin...... Since then, even the Italian national team has entered a "dark age", in the 1950 and 1954 World Cups, Italy failed to qualify from the group, and in 1958 fell to the qualifiers. For many years in the interim, the Italian national team competition was constantly torn between the topic of firing the coach and losing. Between the retirement of Vittorio Pozzo in 1948 and Valcarreghi's succession in 60 years, the Azzurri changed 13 coaches. The Italian team, which had won the World Cup twice and represented the highest level of European football, has since faded out of the stage of the world's strongest teams until they won the championship again in 1982, which shows the far-reaching influence of that Torino team on Italian football.

In the mid-eighties, Italy lifted the ban on foreign aid, and for a time Serie A flourished unprecedentedly, known as the "Little World Cup". After that, the Torino team finally had a small revival. Thanks to the efforts of Enzo Cifo, Carlos Aguilera and Wald Casagrande, Torino has become a dark horse in Italian football.

In 1991, Torino won the Mitropa Cup by beating Pisa.

In the 1991-92 season, he finished third in the United League, and in the UEFA Cup, he defeated Boavista in Portugal and AEK in Athens in Greece to reach the semi-finals. In the semi-finals, they even eliminated Real Madrid over two legs and eliminated their opponents. In the final of the UEFA Cup, Torino also drew with the once exceptionally strong Ajax team, only to be runners-up because of the lack of away goals. Last season, it was Torino who won the Coppa Italia eventually.

However, like many Italian teams of this era, Torino are in financial crisis, losing almost all of the stars who helped them finish runners-up in the UEFA Cup this summer, but this season they managed to keep their competitiveness by the surprise signing of Enzo Francescoli, the 'Prince of Uruguay'. Historically, however, in order to solve the team's financial difficulties, the Torino team sold the "Prince of Uruguay" after this season, and they finally and irreversibly slipped into the abyss.

Although the Torino team has declined, it is still an authentic giant in people's hearts at this time, don't underestimate the word "giant", he has an inexplicable attraction to many players. The reason why Florence has fallen again and again, but has been able to usher in revival every time, is inseparable from these two words. When such giants are in trouble, many times there are excellent players from these giants who automatically take a salary cut and return to these teams, and they seem to have a sense of responsibility to save their parent team, which is the foundation.

Torino are not yet at the end of the road, at least in the eyes of the people, who are still at the top of the league this season and qualify for a place in the UEFA Cup, where they are the reigning champions of the Coppa Italia. Although there are occasional surprising moves by third-division teams like Prato, such as the almost elimination of Inter Milan last season and the defeat of Serie A powerhouse Foggia this season, there are too many such sudden and short-lived teams in Serie A's 100-year history, and they can occasionally beat opponents who are much more famous than them, but it is difficult to maintain a winning streak, in the final analysis, because of a lack of foundation.

Prato is one such team that has been around since 1908 but has not won a single cup of the third division until this year, let alone other honours. So even though they beat Torino 2-1 in their opening game, no one was optimistic about them coming out of the way. The media are looking for data to support their claims, such as: "There has never been a third division team in the history of the Coppa Italia to reach the final!" "Torino have never lost at home to a third-division team", "Torino have never kept a clean sheet at home this season", etc., as if reaching the final of a third-division team like Prato would tarnish the competition.

Even in Prato's local media, few people believed that their team would make it to the final, and they were cautious in their rhetoric, saying that the team was almost certain to enter the second division next season, and as long as the young people in the current team were retained, the team would have a bright future. The implication is that the team has to win glory in the future, not now.

On 2 March 1994, the second leg of the Coppa Italia 93/94 semi-finals was held at the Stadio del Alpi in Turin. Built specifically for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, the stadium was designed by architect Hutter and cost 180 billion lira, has a total of 69,041 seats, and is the home of both Torino and Juventus. Although Turin, with a population of more than 1.2 million, is already considered a big city in Italy, the attendance of Torino games is often less than half due to the fact that the arch-rival Juventus team has to divide a large part of the fans. This is one of the reasons why Juventus later reduced the seating capacity of the stadium to 41,000.

Today, however, the stadium, which can accommodate nearly 70,000 people, is full. The Piedmont region, where Turin is located, is one of the six regions with the largest number of Chinese in Italy, and it is only more than 300 kilometers away from Prato, which can be reached in more than two hours by train. The Estadio del Alpi is located 3.5 kilometres from Turin's Porta Nuova train station, making it even more convenient for fans in Prato. In addition, the stadium is only 1 km from the entrance to the Turin-Milan motorway, and the Lombardy region, where Milan is located, has almost as many Chinese as Prato. Last season's Coppa Italia match against Inter Milan brought Prato a lot of Chinese fans in Lombardy, and there is nothing more important for these Chinese struggling to survive in a foreign country than to see Chinese players of the same race as themselves excel in football, a sport that foreigners regard as a religion. These fans have even come to Prato to watch football matches in groups this season, and Milan is almost 300 kilometers away from Prato anyway, and the train can also reach it in more than two hours. After hearing that Prato reached the Italian semi-finals and defeated Serie A giants Foggia in the first leg, the Milanese Chinese, who are only more than a kilometer away from Turin City, almost flocked to it.

Before the game began, the already crowded stadium was like boiling oil, and the atmosphere was warm to the extreme.