Fresh off announcing Fabio Grosso’s dismissal, Fiorentina has hired his replacement. For the second time in less than a year, the ex-Viola leftback has been brought in to replace a catastrophic coach who was supposed to oversee a new project. The club hasn’t announced the terms of his contract but Nicolò Schira reports that he’s signed until 2028. The new mister is already at the Viola Park and ran his first training session this afternoon.
For some background on Vanoli, I’ll plagiarize what I wrote about him when he took the job 10 months ago to the day:
“Vanoli, 53 [now 54], was something of a journeyman leftback during his playing days. He spent the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 seasons with Fiorentina, winning the Coppa Italia (the club’s last major trophy), making 59 appearances with 3 goals, 3 assists, 9 yellow cards, and 2 red cards. He also played at Venezia, Hellas Verona, Parma, and Bologna, as well as 2-year stint in Scotland with Rangers, eventually retiring in 2007. In his career, he earned 2 caps for Italy and even scored against Belgium.
After a couple years spent taking his badges, he returned to the game in 2010 as an assistant for Italy’s U17. He spent 5 years working at youth level before joining Antonio Conte as a collaborator for the senior side before following him to Chelsea and then Inter Milan, picking up winner’s medals for both the Premier League and Serie A.
Spartak Moscow poached him in 2021 for his first head coaching job and he led them to the Russian Cup but departed after that due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He soon found work at Venezia, stabilizing the struggling Lagunari and eventually leading them back to Serie A, but they declined to keep him around for the first tier campaign. Instead, Torino brought him on board in 2024 and he led the Granata to 11th place but got the axe despite Urbano Cairo and company selling much of the team out from under him.“
Now for the update. Last year, Vanoli performed a minor miracle in turning Fiorentina’s season around after taking over from Stefano Pioli. His reward was a handshake as Fabio Paratici ushered him out the door. Such treatment felt shabby at the time and feels shabby now; surely a coach who’d saved the club from the indignation of a centenary season in Serie B deserved a full season at the helm. He wasn’t Paratici’s guy, however, and the new sporting director made it clear early and often that he planned to clean house. Vanoli was the most obvious target.
There’s a certain narrative justice in this course of events but narrative justice doesn’t win games. Vanoli, however, does. After he switched to a back 4 last year, Fiorentina won 36 points in 23 games; if you discount the return leg against Udinese, when he inexplicably returned to a back 3, that’s an average of 1.64 points per game. Over the course of a full season, that’s a 62-point pace. It would’ve translated to 7th place, 3 ahead of Raffaele Palladino’s Atalanta. In short, he didn’t just rescue the Viola. He made them competent. And even then, we knew he was doomed.
I’m very curious to see how his side will look the second time around. Last year, his most important job was psychological. The players were in shock and Vanoli managed to snap them out of it. He didn’t deny that his tactics were rudimentary and it was clear that they weren’t perfect. The set piece defense remained a disaster, for example, and the team dropped a lot of points by dropping deep and inviting too much pressure late in games. There were no artists. There were barely artisans. What Vanoli did was instill in his charges a baseline capacity for working and suffering that was painfully absent under Pioli.
Once again, he’ll begin in media res. No offseason to tinker. No input on personnel. You know that nightmare where you’re plummeting, the earth rushing up to meet you, oblivion’s maw opening? That’s what Vanoli’s awoken into. Fiorentina isn’t nearly as far into its fall this time so he won’t have to arrest as much momentum. The downward velocity isn’t terminal yet. Especially without European distractions, he might have enough time to do something cool with this obscenely expensive roster.
Bentornato, mister Vanoli. We missed you. We hope you seize this opportunity and throttle it into submission. In bocca al lupo.
