Andrea Della Valle just couldn’t take it any more.
The tension was getting to him. His nerves were shot. And so in the second half of Tuesday night’s Coppa Italia semi final second leg, the Fiorentina owner got up from his seat at the Artemio Franchi and went inside. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this emotional before,” Della Valle said. “I left a few minutes before the end. Well, quite a long time before the end.”
It was just as well he did as he might well have had a heart attack in the 94th minute when Luis Muriel was through on goal. Had the Udinese striker scored he would taken the tie to extra-time. Alas he didn’t. Neto, the Fiorentina goalkeeper and man of the match, made a stunning stop from him then Nico Lopez on the rebound to ensure Fiorentina reached their first final in 13 years.
Once considered the Achilles Heel of the team, taking heavy criticism for his mistakes and for not being Julio Cesar or Michael Agazzi, the `keepers Fiorentina could have bought last summer, the crowd were now singing his name. After the full-time whistle, every one of Neto’s teammates rushed back to thank him. He was the first player sought out by coach Vincenzo Montella. Theirs was a long embrace.
It was safe for Della Valle to come out now. His brother and co-owner of Fiorentina, Diego, congratulated him. As did Matteo Renzi, the Mayor of Florence and leader of the Democratic party, who’d then leave the ground and, over the next few days, demand Italy form a new government, provoking the resignation of prime minister Enrico Letta.
The tension was getting to him. His nerves were shot. And so in the second half of Tuesday night’s Coppa Italia semi final second leg, the Fiorentina owner got up from his seat at the Artemio Franchi and went inside. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this emotional before,” Della Valle said. “I left a few minutes before the end. Well, quite a long time before the end.”
It was just as well he did as he might well have had a heart attack in the 94th minute when Luis Muriel was through on goal. Had the Udinese striker scored he would taken the tie to extra-time. Alas he didn’t. Neto, the Fiorentina goalkeeper and man of the match, made a stunning stop from him then Nico Lopez on the rebound to ensure Fiorentina reached their first final in 13 years.
Once considered the Achilles Heel of the team, taking heavy criticism for his mistakes and for not being Julio Cesar or Michael Agazzi, the `keepers Fiorentina could have bought last summer, the crowd were now singing his name. After the full-time whistle, every one of Neto’s teammates rushed back to thank him. He was the first player sought out by coach Vincenzo Montella. Theirs was a long embrace.
It was safe for Della Valle to come out now. His brother and co-owner of Fiorentina, Diego, congratulated him. As did Matteo Renzi, the Mayor of Florence and leader of the Democratic party, who’d then leave the ground and, over the next few days, demand Italy form a new government, provoking the resignation of prime minister Enrico Letta.
Gabriele Maltinti/Getty ImagesFiorentina are in their first final in 13 years as they'll head to Rome to face Napoli in the Coppa Italia final.
A Tony Blair-like figure in Italian politics, he looks set to lead the country from Rome, where he’ll get to see his team Fiorentina play Napoli at the Olimpico in a final in May that’s refreshing for being without the usual suspects and a contest between sides that play some delightful football. Sides who are currently third and fourth in Serie A and duking it out for the final Champions League place.
"Tutti a Roma ale" the fans sang (which translates to "Let's all go to Rome"). The atmosphere at the Franchi was joyous. Barriers between the stands and the pitch have been taken down this season for good behaviour adding to it. Before the game, Fiorentina’s captain Manuel Pasqual, a contemporary art collector in his spare time who has been at the club now for eight years, promised the head of security he’d dive into the crowd if they won. He was as good as his word.
Pasqual had scored the opener, volleying a knock-down from Joaquin at the far post into the roof of the net to level the scores on aggregate at 2-2. It was a magnificent team goal, bettered perhaps by the individual effort from Juan Cuadrado that followed, a screamer from outside the box that kissed the underside of the bar as it flew in. Co-owned by Udinese the livewire Colombia winger condemned his friends from Friuli to elimination. But it was a bittersweet night for him. Booked in the 92nd minute, Cuadrado will sit out the final through suspension. “I’m a little sad,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
It’s a shame because it promises to be an emotional occasion and quite different at least in the build up to finals past. In 1996, Fiorentina’s win was overshadowed by the violence that happened before, during and after the second leg against Atalanta in Bergamo: 70 people were injured, among them 40 policemen and carabinieri. In 2001, there was turbulence of a different kind: Fiorentina had finished ninth in Serie A. Owner Vittorio Cecchi Gori had sacked the popular Fatih Terim after he got them into the final, then named a rookie manager in his place, the precocious Roberto Mancini who led the team to victory over Parma. All the while the threat of bankruptcy loomed large over the club. Fiorentina would go under a year later.
"Tutti a Roma ale" the fans sang (which translates to "Let's all go to Rome"). The atmosphere at the Franchi was joyous. Barriers between the stands and the pitch have been taken down this season for good behaviour adding to it. Before the game, Fiorentina’s captain Manuel Pasqual, a contemporary art collector in his spare time who has been at the club now for eight years, promised the head of security he’d dive into the crowd if they won. He was as good as his word.
Pasqual had scored the opener, volleying a knock-down from Joaquin at the far post into the roof of the net to level the scores on aggregate at 2-2. It was a magnificent team goal, bettered perhaps by the individual effort from Juan Cuadrado that followed, a screamer from outside the box that kissed the underside of the bar as it flew in. Co-owned by Udinese the livewire Colombia winger condemned his friends from Friuli to elimination. But it was a bittersweet night for him. Booked in the 92nd minute, Cuadrado will sit out the final through suspension. “I’m a little sad,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
It’s a shame because it promises to be an emotional occasion and quite different at least in the build up to finals past. In 1996, Fiorentina’s win was overshadowed by the violence that happened before, during and after the second leg against Atalanta in Bergamo: 70 people were injured, among them 40 policemen and carabinieri. In 2001, there was turbulence of a different kind: Fiorentina had finished ninth in Serie A. Owner Vittorio Cecchi Gori had sacked the popular Fatih Terim after he got them into the final, then named a rookie manager in his place, the precocious Roberto Mancini who led the team to victory over Parma. All the while the threat of bankruptcy loomed large over the club. Fiorentina would go under a year later.
Gabriele Maltinti/Getty ImagesAndrea Della Valle and his brother Diego have helped turn Fiorentina around from financial instability and into Italy's elite.
It was the Della Valle family who resurrected the club, deciding to re-form it, at least until they could buy the name back, as Florentia Viola. “You know all the sacrifices we’ve made,” Andrea said on Tuesday, his voice trembling. “Starting all over again from Serie C2, 12 years ago. We’d just won the Coppa Italia then there was nothing.” By getting to the final again, there’s a sense Fiorentina have come full circle. A shot at a piece silverware was the one thing missing from the Della Valle’s ownership.
Under Cesare Prandelli, Fiorentina got to a UEFA Cup semi-final in 2008 only for Fabio Liverani and Christian Vieri to miss their penalties in a shootout with Rangers. He also guided them to a Coppa Italia semi-final in 2010 only to lose to Inter’s treble winners. They were agonisingly close. Now there’s ecstasy. They’ve made it at last. The focus these past few days has been on the journey rather than the goal and it’s been a journey full of twists and turns, ups and downs.
A new direction was decided upon 18 months ago. Holding the map was new sporting director Daniele Prade, formerly of Roma, and technical director Eduardo Macia, once of Valencia and Liverpool. They wanted to do things differently. Just listen to Macia talk about Italian football in La Repubblica. “It’s closed off from the world, impatient, full of prejudices,” he says.
“It’s afraid of everything that it doesn’t know. It refuses to know. It labels [players] as unsuitable, without trying to understand them. Vieira, Bergkamp, Van der Sar, Henry. Great players abroad, ‘unsuitable’ to Italy. It’s a traumatic game here where it’s difficult for a coach to have time to build. It lives in stereotypes: it says no to players from the north of Europe because they’re indecipherable, no to Anglo-Saxons because they don’t settle, no to Africans because they’re mysterious. If you don’t open yourself up, without dialogue, you lose competitiveness. Italy was the avant-garde, now it sleeps.”
Prade and Macia have woken Fiorentina up to new possibilities. They appointed a bright young manager in Montella who Prade’s successor at Roma, a certain Franco Baldini, underestimated. After not making his caretaker role a permanent one all he could do was look on as Montella made Catania play like a little Barcelona and achieve what at the time was their highest points total ever in Serie A. Montella was fresh. He had and was open to new ideas [a little like Renzi, the city’s mayor].
Backing him to the hilt, Prade and Macia set about recruiting players to fit his vision of how football should be played - possession-based, initiative-taking, attacking football. Prade brought in David Pizarro and Alberto Aquilani, ball-players he knew from Roma while Macia saw an opportunity in Villarreal’s relegation, signing Gonzalo Rodriguez and Borja Valero for €8.5m combined. He’d later go back for the injured Giuseppe Rossi, a risk but one they were confident would pay off. It meant the spine of the Villarreal team that had played Champions League football the previous season had been transplanted to Fiorentina for 18.5m euros.
Under Cesare Prandelli, Fiorentina got to a UEFA Cup semi-final in 2008 only for Fabio Liverani and Christian Vieri to miss their penalties in a shootout with Rangers. He also guided them to a Coppa Italia semi-final in 2010 only to lose to Inter’s treble winners. They were agonisingly close. Now there’s ecstasy. They’ve made it at last. The focus these past few days has been on the journey rather than the goal and it’s been a journey full of twists and turns, ups and downs.
A new direction was decided upon 18 months ago. Holding the map was new sporting director Daniele Prade, formerly of Roma, and technical director Eduardo Macia, once of Valencia and Liverpool. They wanted to do things differently. Just listen to Macia talk about Italian football in La Repubblica. “It’s closed off from the world, impatient, full of prejudices,” he says.
“It’s afraid of everything that it doesn’t know. It refuses to know. It labels [players] as unsuitable, without trying to understand them. Vieira, Bergkamp, Van der Sar, Henry. Great players abroad, ‘unsuitable’ to Italy. It’s a traumatic game here where it’s difficult for a coach to have time to build. It lives in stereotypes: it says no to players from the north of Europe because they’re indecipherable, no to Anglo-Saxons because they don’t settle, no to Africans because they’re mysterious. If you don’t open yourself up, without dialogue, you lose competitiveness. Italy was the avant-garde, now it sleeps.”
Prade and Macia have woken Fiorentina up to new possibilities. They appointed a bright young manager in Montella who Prade’s successor at Roma, a certain Franco Baldini, underestimated. After not making his caretaker role a permanent one all he could do was look on as Montella made Catania play like a little Barcelona and achieve what at the time was their highest points total ever in Serie A. Montella was fresh. He had and was open to new ideas [a little like Renzi, the city’s mayor].
Backing him to the hilt, Prade and Macia set about recruiting players to fit his vision of how football should be played - possession-based, initiative-taking, attacking football. Prade brought in David Pizarro and Alberto Aquilani, ball-players he knew from Roma while Macia saw an opportunity in Villarreal’s relegation, signing Gonzalo Rodriguez and Borja Valero for €8.5m combined. He’d later go back for the injured Giuseppe Rossi, a risk but one they were confident would pay off. It meant the spine of the Villarreal team that had played Champions League football the previous season had been transplanted to Fiorentina for 18.5m euros.
Francisco Leong/AFP/Getty ImagesManager Vincenzo Montella has reinvigorated Fiorentina with a fresh approach in his coaching style.
Another impressive hallmark of Fiorentina’s transfer strategy has been their trait of identifying and signing players once considered the next big thing who never realised their potential -- think Mati Fernandez and more recently Anderson -- in the hope that they might regenerate them in Florence.
They’ve dared to dream the impossible dream. Take signing Mario Gomez for instance. Fiorentina could have thought to themselves: "We’ll never be able to sign someone like him." But they tried and got Gomez. When viewed as a whole, their recruitment has been smart and ballsy. It’s also testament to a couple of things: One, you can transform the structure of your team and it’s style of play in a couple of windows. Two, it makes ‘the transition year’ -- time needed to integrate a number of new players and impose a philosophy -- look like the excuse it is. Fiorentina were the most improved team in Serie A last season: they were 24 points better off than in 2011-12.
The synergy and coherence at the club is exemplary. Montella, though, deserves special praise. Beyond how well the team play, think of how he has developed the likes of Neto [telling the club not to buy him another goalkeeper] and Cuadrado; just think of how he has recovered players who were on the fringes and had fallen out of favour: Adem Ljajic last season, Juan Manuel Vargas in this; think of how Fiorentina are still fourth and in the hunt for the Champions League despite losing Gomez in mid-September and then Rossi at the beginning of the New Year.
Montella has yet to win the Panchina d’Oro, Italy’s Coach of the Year award, but he should do so sooner or later. Fourth in Serie A, still in the Europa League and with a Coppa Italia final in the diary, the aeroplanino is flying high.
They’ve dared to dream the impossible dream. Take signing Mario Gomez for instance. Fiorentina could have thought to themselves: "We’ll never be able to sign someone like him." But they tried and got Gomez. When viewed as a whole, their recruitment has been smart and ballsy. It’s also testament to a couple of things: One, you can transform the structure of your team and it’s style of play in a couple of windows. Two, it makes ‘the transition year’ -- time needed to integrate a number of new players and impose a philosophy -- look like the excuse it is. Fiorentina were the most improved team in Serie A last season: they were 24 points better off than in 2011-12.
The synergy and coherence at the club is exemplary. Montella, though, deserves special praise. Beyond how well the team play, think of how he has developed the likes of Neto [telling the club not to buy him another goalkeeper] and Cuadrado; just think of how he has recovered players who were on the fringes and had fallen out of favour: Adem Ljajic last season, Juan Manuel Vargas in this; think of how Fiorentina are still fourth and in the hunt for the Champions League despite losing Gomez in mid-September and then Rossi at the beginning of the New Year.
Montella has yet to win the Panchina d’Oro, Italy’s Coach of the Year award, but he should do so sooner or later. Fourth in Serie A, still in the Europa League and with a Coppa Italia final in the diary, the aeroplanino is flying high.
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