Pioggia Viola : AFC Fiorentina

Things are headed in the right direction in Florence and kit sales are on the rise. Florentino Firenze and Federico Marino kit sales are increasing rapidly while Talles Magno continues to be one of the most popular names around town, for the time being sales are mostly concentrated around Florence but there is a noticeable uptick in the United States and Asia. The big kit / commercial news for the club is that a new sponsor, rumored to be Sky Italia, is already on board with a healthy increase over the current Vodafone deal.


The team is maintaining the purple-white-red scheme with a little more detail this year. The subtle pattern is based on the Fiorentina logo, with the Coccarda and Scudetto remaining there’s a lot going on here. Too many patches is a good problem to have for I Viola.

Quite a fan of those designs.

All the gear and no fear, ready for the new season

Very nice and sleek designs, I'm a big fan! Good attention to detail with the Coppa Italia decal on the chest as well.

Vincenzo Montella managed to talk ownership into staying home last season, but after back-to-back domestic titles it was hard to keep the team on Florence soil. Instead of staying in the region, ownership decided to send the team just about as far as they possibly could to grab a slice of the Asian market. I Viola isn’t quite ready to invade China, so a trip to Singapore turned out to be the next best option. Serie A is already holding the Supercoppa Italia final in Saudi Arabia, the team might as well try to spread their brand in asia. It didn’t turn out to be a major issue, but two players (Nicolò Branzino and Roberto Cannata) managed to suffer hernias before even getting on the plane. The injuries would cost both (4) weeks, but it turned out to be more of a blessing as they were spared they long distance travel.


While most of the senior squad was cavorting around Singapore, with a side trip to Kuala Lumpur, a number of Fiorentina players were starring in the 2022 U-21 Euro. Italy would take home the trophy after a 1-0 win over England, thanks in part to some standout players who wear purple to work. Degnand Wilfried Gnonto would win the Golden Boot with (6) goals and Daniele Albano would win the Best Player Award. The dream team would be overflowing with Fiorentina players, despite the restructuring underway it looks like the future is bright.

Certainly a lot of promise can be taken from the Team of the Tournament and the number of Fiorentina players included within it. Hopefully the club have improved their profile over in Singapore with quite the emphatic victory!

I love Armini, good player, keen to use him in FM20 before we move onto the next edition

Armini is a superb defender, unsurprised to see him among the Dream Team.

Lots of Italian players in there, good to see! Gnonto has been insane for me this game, and Armini too, as others already remarked.

The world’s smallest violin is playing for Fiorentina when they talk about income issues, it’s hard to take someone seriously when they finish the summer with what is rumored to be a £457M transfer fund. The team is dead set on avoiding the market, but with profit issues outside of transfers there were a number of players that had to go.

For the most part anyone over (25) and anyone who has been a transfer target for years found themselves heading out the door. The players in the “Not Surprised” tier were Pedro, Pol Lirola, Lyanco, Riccardo Orsolini, Armando Izzo, and more recently Luca Pellegrini. All of these players had teams chasing them before the window opened and on some level Fiorentina couldn’t pass them up. Izzo was involved in a rather entertaining pissing contest as Porto and Benfica drove up the prices for him before Benfica finally landed him.

Daniele Pradè managed to look like a smart man thanks to a few transfer sagas that the team managed to dodge. Jude Bellingham became a hot commodity when Napoli lodged a £17M offer and set off alarm bells over in Manchester. United and City came in with a number of bids starting at £22M and getting up to £44.5M, Fiorentina were not interested in selling and Bellingham didn’t appear to be interested in leaving. Eugenio Barzini also became a hot target as Atlético Madrid (£44M) and Inter (£50M) went all in on the backup RW, but Fiorentina just weren’t interested in moving him. The one player that managed to spin transfer interest into more money for himself was Pelayo Morilla, Napoli came sniffing around the CAM for £21M and he demanded a new deal. Morilla only asked for £4M a year, which seems a massive bargain, so the club was more than happy to lock him up through 2028.

The weirdest sale of the window was youngster Fabio Nicolo. From time to time teams will come calling for some of Fiorentina’s high-value youngsters, but the offers are usually a few million over the price they paid or at most £10M for a youngster who could net £40M+ in just a few years. Inter, for some reason, decided to go way overboard for Nicolo (who isn’t really a highly regarded player) and offer £31.5M. Pradè didn’t have to think long about that one, Inter seems to think more of him than Fiorentina and Pradè wasn’t about to change their mind.



Senior / Major Transfers (Out)
Pol Lirola (RB, Manchester City) £55M
Pedro (CF, Inter Milan) £55M
Lyanco (CB, Liverpool) £46M
Luca Pellegrini (LB, Wolves) £45.5M
Riccardo Orsolini (RW, Arsenal) £44M
Fabio Nicolo (CM, Inter Milan) £31.5M
Armando Izzo (CB, SL Benfica) £30.5M

Senior Transfers (In)
-

Final Transfer List (Impact Signings)
Wander (CAM, Internacional - Brazil) £6.5M
Ismael Masséna (CF, Le Havre AC - France) £3.2M
Juan Alberto Soriano (RW, Club América - Mexico) £1.5M
Arnaud Malaxage (CB, AS Monaco - France) £1.1M
Tullio Speranza (CF, Sambiase - Italy) £110K

Pradè went on a rampage in France, specifically at AS Monaco, trying to land four prospects that his scouts had identified as future stars. Sadly, AS Monaco had similar views of those players and were only willing to surrender one of them for less than £10M. Arnaud Malaxage is the headliner here, despite the high price paid for Wander, he’s only 15 but Pradè has high hopes for his development. Trouble recruiting in Italy continues with the best finds clocking in at prices similar to senior players and players at the more traditional powers continue to show little interest in wearing purple.

A lot of cash has been generated from this window, it's safe to say!

AH my god that is a lot of money in from sales

Invest that cash in some stock indices and you'll be the richest man on earth within a couple of years. Absolutely insane amounts of money raised!

A partially rebuilt squad would head into the season with high expectations and a high amount of risk with so many young players being thrust into starting spots. Vincenzo Montella has been excellent at turning youth talent into senior starters, so the biggest issue will be getting all that potential converted into wins.


GROUP A
Manchester United (England)
Fiorentina (Italy)
Zenit (Russian)
Celtic (Scotland)

This year’s Champions League draw would be full of familiar faces. Landing in a group with a loaded Manchester United wouldn’t be good news, the presence of Federico Chiesa wouldn’t help things when they had back to Artemio Franchi. Being drawn with Zenit again would mean another long trip to Russia, but getting Celtic for the fourth team would make up for it. Fiorentina would be a favorite to advance, but with United in their way winning the group would be unlikely.

Other Italian teams would not get off so easy. Serie A surprise Cagliari would get a group of death (or major injury) with Bayern Munich and PSG along with Dinamo Zagreb. AC Milan would have it a little easier with Benfica, RB Leipzig, and Olympiakos. Lazio would land with Real Madrid, Porti, and KRC Genk for a group they could advance from. Juventus would land in a group with nobody, the Turin club would be down in the Europa League after a terrible league season. All but four teams feel great because this year spawned an Ultimate Group of Death as Group F would end up with Arsenal, Borussia Dortmund, AS Monaco, and Ajax. No days off in that group...




What was that about an easy trip to Glasgow? Up to this point Fiorentina had an easy go of things in Serie A and even beat Manchester United 2-1 at home in the Champions League. Montella didn’t even have the excuse of looking past Celtic at a bigger game, they had just stomped Lazio 4-0 on the road and had Torino at home after this game. The next Champions League fixture would be a rematch with Celtic, most media outlets assumed these would be two easy wins.

“We played like *expletive*, I can’t put it any other way. Garbage, and the players know it.”

Montella was clearly upset with the performance, anyone who watched the game would have known that right away. Celtic managed to score twice in the first 23’, both coming from Odsonne Edouard. The first was on a free kick into the box that was mercifully called offsides, though that didn’t temper Montella’s anger. I Viola gave Celtic players a number of shots at the ball, it was really a miracle that Edouard was called offside. His second goal was much worse, he looked a mile offsides but that had more to do with Fiorentina surrendering a ‘Route One’ type goal that left Edouard one-on-one with Bartłomiej Drągowski and all the open space he could want.

The first squad embarrassed themselves for a solid 81’, giving the game away to Celtic like they just didn’t care to defend. Abdou Fall finally pulled Fiorentina even when Celtic’s back line got too tight to the goal and opened a crease just at the top of the box for Florentino Firenze to fire a cross through to the back post for Fall. I Viola looked like they had turned things around until 80-Grade Name Boli Bolingoli was left unmarked on the far side of the field during a throw in, his shot from just inside the left corner of the box found the left side of the goal wide open and Celtic were back up 2-1 at 86’. This loss wasn’t going to kill their season, and it’s unreasonable to expect perfection, but the way they folded left Montella furious.


With no fixtures against Juventus and the rest of Italy’s clubs losing ground to Fiorentina this game jumped out as one fans couldn’t miss. Yes, the 2-1 win at home was exciting but a trip to Old Trafford on Europe’s biggest stage was an opportunity to show everyone that Fiorentina belonged with the best. Luckily for Montella, the Premier League did him a favor and showed everyone why he leans on squad rotation so much.

It only took 10’ for Fiorentina to put United into a hole that they wouldn’t be able to climb out of. Newly appointed manager Thomas Tuchel could not believe what he was seeing, but in retrospect he couldn’t have expected much more from his squad. With a game against Aston Villa (3) days before and a game against Leicester (which they would lose 2-3) coming up right after this one, his squad was quite tired. Alberigo Maldini would head in a goal at 8’ off a corner and Fall would score at 8’ from the right corner of the goal area by tucking a shot into the left side netting. Fall’s goal was a better example of the condition United was in, Fall is fast but a tired United team made him look like the Flash.



Tuchel’s 4-1-2-3 should have made things hard for Fiorentina, but instead it became a liability as Rúben Neves became the poster boy for fixture fatigue. Usually a solid anchor man can frustrate Fiorentina’s attack by making things difficult for their midfield three, specifically the CAM, but a tired Neves could barely affect Pelayo Morilla’s game. Neves even admitted he felt like he was at 60% by the half, a half which United only managed to shoot twice in.

Two more shots in the second half handed the game to Fiorentina, Tuchel ended up taking Neves out and switching to a 4-2-3-1 which put things further into Montella’s favor. The visitors owned the action despite a decent split in possession, but as usual most of United’s possession was at the back as they struggled to get forward. The win would clinch a spot in the next round and the group, now on (12) points with a game left there was no way United could catch them.


When Fiorentina opened the league with a 4-0 win over Inter it extended their Serie A unbeaten streak to (60) games and set a new record. Montella didn’t stop there as Fiorentina won every game outside of the Celtic debacle, in all competitions, and rarely looked like losing was an option. Only once, in the 2-1 win over United, did Fiorentina fail to win by less than (2) and shut out their opponent (13) times. Once again the tactic of scoring a ton of goals while keeping your opponent from scoring at all looks to be effective. Through all of this the second squad was proving to be as good as Montella had hoped for, primarily they were surviving with good defending and scoring explosions from Hélder Lavado and Eugenio Barzini. The pairing of Daniele Albano and Franck Blanc in the double pivot was also bearing fruit, their age was having little effect on their level of performance.

It would be hard to call it a serious issue, but Fiorentina was starting to have problems scoring through the middle. Morilla failed to live up to the expectations he created before last season and he isn’t bouncing back from a down 2022-23 outing. This is where Montella’s well oiled machine would come into play, the RB/LB to RW/LW attack would be a boon to fans of back post scoring. Crosses from the wing to the back post would be a big chunk of Fiorentina’s scoring, along with their deadly setup on corners, and it didn’t look like anyone had an answer to it.




Fiorentina would take over the Serie A Team of the Year along with all of the biggest individual awards. The one award that wasn’t won by an active Fiorentina player was taken by one on loan, Maximo Fazio continued his run of solid play during a second loan spell at Cagliari. With all the money Fiorentina has spent on youth transfers it’s hard to believe one of their best buys may have been the £130K purchase from Reggina in Lega Pro Girone C. I Viola also swept the voting for two categories (Defender and Midfielder) with Firenze, Alberigo Maldini, Fall, and Daniel Maldini coming up just short.


Montella Manager of The Year (Serie A)
European Golden Boy : Daniele Albano - (13) Goals / (9) Assists
FIFA Best U-21 : Daniele Albano
Serie A Player of the Year : Daniele Albano
Serie A GK : Maximo Fazio (Cagliari Loan)
Serie A Defender : Federico Marino (Firenze 2, Maldini 3)
Serie A Midfielder : Daniele Albano (Fall, Maldini)
Serie A Striker : Degnand Wilfried Gnonto


More praise for Montella’s squad rotation along with a top notch medical team as Fiorentina mostly avoided major injuries. The worst of it came up front in September with three injuries hurting the second squad. Nicolo Santoro (10 days) would pull ankle ligaments and Barzini (2 weeks) would damage his foot against Empoli but manage to finish the game. The big injury was Nicolò Branzino dislocating his shoulder in the Emploi game (rough rivalry) and being ruled out for (2) months. Nothing that cost a player more than a few days happened until Barzini twisted an ankle in December, the same foot he damaged against Empoli, and had to be held out for (4) weeks.

A dominant start to the Serie A campaign. No surprise these days. Perhaps some fragility shown in the defeat to Celtic but every team has an off day. Mind you, to have an off day against Celtic is a little strange.