Pioggia Viola : AFC Fiorentina

Doing well domestically and in Europe, this is what we like to see!

Going very nicely already this season. Nicely done!

With very few injuries and a season turning out better than the last, there wasn’t any pressure to sign anyone. Fiorentina is sitting on almost £270M in transfer funds and £40M in available salary, the team is better suited to saving that up to try and keep talent already on the roster than hitting the transfer market. They also need to deal with their standing in the world, even with that kind of money they have a better chance of signing Mathias Pogba than Paul Pogba.

Hoarding some salary looked really smart when Manchester United showed up with a £71M bid for Talles Magno and he turned that into a solid case for a new contract. Looking to keep him in Florence a while longer Vincenzo Montella was more than happy to sign Magno to an £8.5M a year extension. He’s now the highest paid player on the team, but it’s worth it to keep a potential world class talent on hand.

The sole purchase of Claudio Gomes from Manchester City was just a move to shore up the midfield. With no real bench option, and Gomes seeming to bounce around from loan spells, saving him from a loan spell at Eintracht Frankfurt seemed like a good move.

Senior / Major Transfers (Out)
-

Senior Transfers (In)
Claudio Gomes (CM, Manchester City) £4.6M

Final Transfer List (Impact Signings)
Gérard Michel (CB, AS Monaco - France) £4.1M
Rubén Fábrega (CB, AS Monaco - France) £3.8M
Mathias Marseille (CF, Nice - France) £3.4M
Michel Wiltord (CM, FC Nantes - France) £2.9M
Lisandro de Miranda (CM, Benfica - Portugal) £2.7M

Fiorentina clearly spent more on youth players, and they feel really good about this crew. There must be some disconnect between Fiorentina and AS Monaco, because the French club let go of some players Montella is very excited about. Scouts feel like Michel and Fábrega have tremendous upside and could form a partnership in the middle for years to come. Landing two size / speed CB from a single club is a stroke of pure luck, time will tell if it was money well spent.

Hopefully Monaco's lapse of judgement perhaps could prove to be a huge gain for Montella.

I have always wanted to use Claudio Gomes, interested to see how he plays for you

For once Vincenzo Montella might have wanted to drop out of the Coppa Italia and Champions League, adding those to a relentless domestic schedule would make for an obscene run of fixtures. Thanks to the World Cup being played during the winter Fiorentina would have (9) games scheduled for January, (7) in February, (8) in April, and an eye watering (10) in May. Only March would provide a “rest” with a normal (4) games, but at that point the team will have played what would feel like a full season.




If Fiorentina fans needed a reality check, the Champions League semifinal games provided one. After making manager Jesse Marsch look bad during the Champions League group stage it was Montella’s turn. A 3-0 loss at the Camp Nou put Fiorentina in quite a hole, not only did they lose it was the first time all season they had allowed more than (2) goals in a game an the 5th time they had been shut out. No road goals, down 3-0 to Barcelona, the media had already counted them out and Barcelona’s players were already talking about their travel plans for a London final. Fiorentina had beaten teams by (4) during the season, but they were not against a team like Barcelona.

This time, holding on to the ball made a lot more sense as Barcelona showed their quality on the ball. It’s rare for a team to out-possess Fiorentina, with their form back Barcelona made it look easy. It didn’t help that I Viola had to deal with two familiar faces in Filip Jagiello and Paulo Dybala, both of them were key in shutting down Fiorentina’s attack. The Catalan’s were content holding the game at 0-0 and then Fiorentina made a mess of things and handed a goal to Luis Suárez at 67’. A man already hated in Italy created a shower of boos and whistles when he easily passed the ball into the net. Dybala took a through ball and beat Armando Izzo to get in close at the goal area, Lyanco and Pol Lirola crash down into the middle and Dybala suddenly had a wall of four Fiorentina players around him with Bartłomiej Drągowski rushing out, leaving Suárez unmarked at the penalty spot. A cheeky back heel opened things up and the four could only stand there as the game moved farther from reach. He would score again at 76’ off a Leroy Sané header, redirecting a free kick wide for the snaggle-toothed striker to tap in.

Making it this far in the Champions League wasn’t in the cards at the start of the season, but clearly Montella was doing something right. It would be up to the manager to prove it wasn’t a fluke next year.



How the mighty have fallen, in any normal season a win over Juventus should have registered as at least one of the top games of the season. Their last meeting, a 4-0 Fiorentina win, was only remarkable for how poorly Juventus played and how many cigarettes Maurizio Sarri smoked. The thorough beating by Barcelona did light a fire under the squad, they would follow up getting knocked out of the Champions League with a string of big wins heading into the Coppa Italia final. With the second squad exclusively playing in domestic cup games, they would get the call to finish the job.

This became a good game primarily because of how poorly Fiorentina played, despite the occasion the second squad came out flat and Napoli are too good to let that slip. Looking at the stats it won’t shock anyone to know that José Mourinho was in charge, and his team was really good at parking the bus. Napoli wasn’t really interested in attacking, with Nabil Fekir and Lorenzo Insigne lurking Mourinho was more than happy to let I Viola over commit themselves to the attack. For the most part this worked really well, even with 62% possession they had trouble breaking Napoli’s compact defense and could only really get to the outside edge of their third.

Daniele Albano was excellent, providing (5) key passes on his way to a PoM award, but he just couldn’t find the right one to unlock Napoli’s defense. Not long after the half I Viola finally scored off a funny sequence that ended up deciding the game. Federico Marino put the ball between Insigne’s just outside the box to blow past him only to run into Faouzi Ghoulam and have him knock the ball back. Abdou Fall just happened to be there and he clumsily booted the ball across the box for Daniel Maldini to head it in, surprising just about everyone. For Napoli to surrender a goal on a rushed cross that left Fall on the ground was a great example of what kind of game this was turning into. Napoli’s reliance on Route One tactics created a few tense moments for Fekir near the end, but Fiorentina was able to convert their high possession into a solid defense and their second Coppa Italia win in a row.




Setting aside the Barcelona debacle, Montella managed to guide his team to an amazing second half. Just in the Champions League alone, again… forgetting Barcelona, I Viola took on some serious competition and bested them on their level. Drawing Real Madrid right out the group looked like a death sentence, but a 3-0 win at home made a 1-1 draw at Santiago Bernabéu look like a great result. Fiorentina then flipped the results in a match up with Arsenal, beating them 2-0 at home before a 1-1 draw at the Emirates would send them through. Ownership was publicly touting a run at the Champions League final, but most people knew that was a little much for I Viola right now. Getting to the semifinal was a huge step for Fiorentina, now Montella is under pressure to get back there.

It’s hard to tell why, the popular theory is fatigue thanks to playing a thousand games over the second half of the season, but Fiorentina were not as solid on defense as they were prior to the World Cup. Before the break Fiorentina only allowed (5) goals in all competitions, they met that just in January and went on to surrender (16) more over the rest of the season. That doesn’t seem like a lot considering the amount of scoring they did, but it was concerning to see a worn out defense giving up goals where they were expected to shut down their opponents.

All of the hand wringing over details looks pretty silly when the season is taken as a whole. Fiorentina led Serie A in scoring (110) and goals allowed (16), which paints a dominant picture that isn’t far from the truth. I Viola finished (22) points clear of Cagliari in 2nd, more on Cagliari later, and they never really looked like they wouldn’t repeat as league champions. Once again Fiorentina got it done with a true team effort, only Pedro even came close to leading a non-rating statistical category by finishing 2nd in goals with (17). The scoring was really spread around with (5) players scoring double digits and (8) scoring at least (5). The stat that does jump out is how well the team rated in Montella’s system, all but (5) players averaged 7.0 or higher across all competitions. That seems even more impressive when you pull out both keepers, they didn’t see enough shots to boost their ratings, and see that the three remaining players all came off the bench with youngster Roman Mexès only making (2) appearances. Montella managed to engineer a total demolition of Serie A, at this rate nobody will be able to stop them.



A season this dominant was bound to garner some awards, especially in Serie A, and nobody was surprised by Fiorentina sweeping the domestic awards for best players. The one surprise, though Fiorentina’s scouts will say otherwise, was youngster Hélder Lavado putting on a show at Porto on loan. Daniele Pradè is looking like a genius for snagging Lavado, Pedro may have become expendable thanks to the scoring prowess of the Portuguese national.

European Golden Boy : Hélder Lavado - (29) Goals / (7) Assists
Portugues Premier League Top Goalscorer : Lavado (19) goals / 4 assist
Serie A Best Player : Florentino Firenze
Serie A Best Young Player : Florentino Firenze
Serie A GK : Maximo Fazio (Cagliari)
Serie A Best Defender : Florentino Firenze
Serie A Best Mid : Maxence Caqueret
Serie A Best Striker : Pedro


Once again Montella managed to pair a solid second half with a short list of mostly minor injuries. The worst injury was Alban Lafont twisting his ankle in practice during the World Cup break, costing him (3) weeks. Daniele Albano missed a little over a week thanks to blisters on his left foot, and Pol Lirola missed (9) days after injuring his wrist at home. That last one may have been the only source of drama the media could find, Lirola claimed to have injured himself when he tripped but rumors persist he did it riding a motorcycle which would have pissed off Montella. Whatever actually happened, the team had nothing to say about it publicly.

Incredible end to the season mate! I can only dream of winning the Serie A, let alone unbeaten. Congrats!

This story is amazing! Let's hope the board decides to build a new stadium soon as well!
Bringing in the youngsters early to make them grow in the youth teams seems to work a treat!
Also loving the fact Florentino Firenze is doing insane at a club basically made for him with that name!
Keep going, let's win the Champions League!

Great writing in these updates mate, I was drawn to it and couldn't stop reading! Surely that's a record haul of points in Serie A and to go unbeaten aswell, tremendous! Shame about the Champions League, but the Qatar World Cup is a nuisance to every major European team and that was definitely a huge factor in your losses to Barca in the semi's.

Walked the league in, congratulations.

Cagliari finishing second is the stuff of dreams!

2020-05-25 16:00#272163 Griffo : Walked the league in, congratulations.

Cagliari finishing second is the stuff of dreams!

I'll get to it in the next post, but I either need to fire my scouts or pay them more. Cagliari was the landing spot for a bunch of my youth players on loan, turns out I might have more good players than I thought!

Trophies, trophies, trophies! Do you plan on moving from Fiorentina at any point or will you be staying put?

Easy as you like.

Thats crazy Cantona.. how many players are we talking? and how many appearances

2020-05-25 20:11#272177 Justice : Trophies, trophies, trophies! Do you plan on moving from Fiorentina at any point or will you be staying put?

No, I might do a journeyman save after I finish Fiorentina / United. I'm trying to finish a decade at both clubs.