Every fan base criticizes its team for its transfer policies. Fiorentina fans have had a stronger case than most of late, given the catastrophic failure of the summer mercato. We’ve talked through that enough and I’m tired of it so I decided to investigate what I perceived as a Viola-specific transfer failing: the club’s obsession with signing players who’ve scored against it.
I decided to take a more systematic look at this issue. First, I defined my scope. I felt that this was a specifically Rocco
Commisso and Daniele Pradè thing so I went to Transfermarkt and looked at the signings from summer of 2019 and pushed on from there. Here’s the fruit of that labor: a table of all the signings since summer 2019. I’ve color-coded it by position. You can sort by position or whether or not the player scored against Fiorentina.* I thought it was pretty fun, with fun being a relative term.
Trivia: there are 5 names on there I was convinced had scored against Fiorentina before signing but hadn’t. Answer at the bottom of the article.
In 14 transfer windows starting in summer of 2019, Fiorentina has signed 89 players for an average of 6.3 per window. Of those 89 players, 23 had previously scored against the Viola, which is about 26%. I wasn’t quite satisfied with that, though, because 28 of those 89 hadn’t had the opportunity to score against the Viola by virtue of never facing them in a competitive match. I therefore weeded those 28 out, leaving me with a sample of 71, of whom 23 had previously scored against Fiorentina. That rockets the rate up to 32%, which seems pretty high to me.
But wait. Of the remaining 71, 5 were goalkeepers. Since goalkeepers don’t score goals, I eliminated them from the sample as well. That boosted it to 35%, which means that over a third of Fiorentina’s transfer signings from the past 7 years who’ve had anything approaching a reasonable opportunity to score against the Viola have done so.
I decided to break it down farther by position as well. These categories are by necessity rigid and don’t reflect how the game’s actually played so I made some judgement calls which you’re free to disagree with (e.g. Kevin-Prince Boateng as a striker rather than an attacking midfielder). Anyways, since summer 2019, Fiorentina’s signed 4 centerbacks who’ve previously faced them (2 of whom scored), 6 fullbacks (2), 17 central midfielders (5), 8 attacking midfielders or wingers (6), and 10 strikers (8).
Focusing on the top of the pitch, Fiorentina’s brought in 30 attacking players (10s, strikers, wingers) in those 14 transfer windows. Of those 30, 14 had previously scored against the team. That’s 47%. When you cut that down to the 18 attacking players (10s, wingers, and strikers) that have played against Fiorentina before joining the club, it jumps to 78%.
That feels like sufficient evidence to me that one of Fiorentina’s primary criteria for purchasing an attacking player over the past 7 seasons has been, “Did he score against us?” I posit that this hasn’t worked mainly for three reasons. The first is the obvious issue of sample size. The second is the Viola defense, which was bad for the years directly preceding the Commisso era and through the first half of that era. The third is that the gods above this good earth and the demons below it have cursed this club.
Thank you for your time and indulgence because I’ve had this project on the brain for a couple months and finally put it together. I’d love to assemble a similar profile for every Serie A club over that span but it’d be a significant time commitment that I can’t currently afford. If there’s interest, I’ll give it a go in the summer.
*Kevin Agudelo and Danilo Cataldi have both scored against Fiorentina since departing so I didn’t mark them as having scored before signing, but maybe they deserve extra credit for living backwards in time as if they were Merlin or Benjamin Button.
TRIVIA ANSWERS
- Franck Ribery felt like he got one of the goals in across the two legs of the Champions League tie in 2010 but he didn’t. Bayern’s scorers were Arjen Robben, Miroslav Klose, and Mark van Bommel.
- Krzysztof Piątek inexplicably became Serie A’s deadliest striker in 2018-2019 and scored against 13 teams in the league but somehow failed to breach the Stefano Pioli/Vincenzo Montella squad slumped to 16th, going winless over its final 14 games.
- Antonín Barák oozes mildly cult figure who grabbed a goal on the break in those Hellas Verona teams while the Viola were dithering but never did.
- Rolando Mandragora’s been prolific in Florence but only scored 11 goals in his 4 Serie A seasons (Crotone, Udinese, Torino) before joining Fiorentina.
- Andrea Colpani felt like the sort of Brekalesque journeyman who has a hot stretch in which he scores against Fiorentina and then makes the switch that summer but in his 4 games against the Viola with Monza, he never actually scored.
