I spend a lot of time worrying about the pathway from youth level to first team for Fiorentina and for Italy in general. This summer, the Viola have obliged me with an example of the player churn that curtails development and puts everyone involved into a bad situation. I’m ignoring the team that won the Scudetto Primavera last year because many of them haven’t signed professional terms yet, so I’ll turn to the previous trophy-winning Primavera team: the ultra-talented 2023-2024 group that won the Coppa
Italia. 3 years later, not a single one remains at the club. Here’s every youth player who made a competitive appearance for that team.
2023-2024 Primavera roster
- GK Pietro Leonardelli (Treviso)
- GK Tommaso Martinelli (Avellino)
- GK Laerte Tognetti (none)
- GK Tommaso Vannucchi (Arzignano Valchiampo)
- CB Leonardo Baroncelli (Gubbio)
- CB Christian Biagetti (Lodigani)
- CB Pietro Comuzzo (Torino)
- CB Mirko Elia (Bari)
- CB Eddy Kouadio (Monza)
- CB Filippo Maggini (none)
- CB Lorenzo Romani (Carrarese)
- CB Edoardo Sadotti (Alcione)
- LB Luis Balbo (Sturm Graz)
- LB Niccolò Fortini (Torino)
- LB Giulio Scuderi (Juve Stabia)
- RB Lorenzo Vigiani (Pianese)
- CM Lorenzo Amatucci (Deportivo la Coruña)
- CM Lapo Deli (Empoli)
- CM Ernestas Gudelevičius (Altamura)
- CM Jonas Harder (Basel)
- CM Mattia Ievoli (none)
- CM Carlo Mignani (Asta Taverne)
- CM Federico Vitolo (Certosa)
- AM Niccolò Falconi (Trestina)
- AM Giorgio Puzzoli (Alcione)
- AM Alejandro Mendoza (none)
- AM Tommaso Rubino (Carrarese)
- LW Maat Daniel Caprini (Cesena)
- RW Adrián Dénes (Budapesti VSC)
- RW Riccardo Spaggiari (none)
- CF Riccardo Braschi (Thun)
- CF Filippo Guidobaldi (Vigor Castelfidardo)
- CF Chidiche Ofoma (Roma City)
- CF Francesco Presta (Folloronica Gavorano)
- CF Fallou Sene (Horsens)
The only member of that team to definitively prove that he’s ready for Serie A is Pietro Comuzzo. Niccolò Fortini, Eddy Kouadio, Tommaso Martinelli, Luis Balbo, and Lorenzo Amatucci have all shown that they’re at least top Serie B-level players and could’ve reasonably played for Serie A teams this year. Tommaso Vanucchi, Niccolò Trapani, Lapo Deli, Jonas Harder, Tommaso Rubino, Maat Daniel Caprini, Giorgio Puzzoli, Gabriele Bertolini, and Riccardo Braschi are perhaps a step below in the hierarchy but look like having long professional careers with the potential for more. None of these guys is older than 22.
I’m not interested in relitigating how good any of these players are or how good they could be. Their trajectories aren’t important to this argument. No, what I’m interested in is the process that led Fiorentina to move on from every member of a youth team 28 months after it won that trophy; in normal circumstances, a club in those circumstances—starting a new cycle, no Europe, churning the squad—would promote at least a couple youngsters into the first team, if for no other reason than to evaluate them. I’m trying to figure out why the Viola are going the opposite direction.
The first thing to note is that many of those players, while gone from the club, have a clear path back. A number of these deals are loans. Others, according to various reports, contain buy-back clauses, such as Martinelli’s. The logic is sound: the club that’s acquired the player is motivated to play them immediately in order to make some money off the transaction. Essentially, Fiorentina has outsourced its development, guaranteeing its prospects game time with real stakes in a way that it couldn’t in Florence, even if it ever gets a B-team up and running.
The buyback clause makes sense. A lot of the sell-on clauses, however, don’t. Fiorentina was at the forefront of getting screwed by sell-on clauses a decade ago in AC Milan’s Ante Rebić move. Such financial doping measures have only become more common, particularly because it’s in everyone’s interest except for the club holding the sell-on clause. Because the club getting the player isn’t financially incentivized to develop that player, they’re more likely to hang onto them unless a silly offer arrives. The potential revenue flowing towards the Viola Park doesn’t justify the potential loss of a cheap, useful squad player who helps meet registration guidelines.
Even if they’re not quite ready, academy players are cheap. They’re usually on their first professional contracts, earning under a million euros a year. If they’re not ready, that’s fine. They’re usually emergency backups (i.e. the 5th winger, 3rd leftback, 4th striker) and if they’re playing big minutes, the team’s toast anyway; think Riccardo Braschi last year. For someone so obsessed with slashing wages, I’m surprised Paratici didn’t keep one of the young attackers around as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency guy, especially as that would’ve allowed the player to train with Grosso and learn the ropes.
It comes back to the purpose of the academy. For fans, it provides hope and connection. The hope is twofold. On a direct level, it’s the limitless potential of the unknown. This next kid’s going to be world-class, trust me, bro. Beyond that, though, it provides fans with evidence that their club is developing players well, that the youngsters in the pipeline matter, and that the brain trust has a plan that’s working. Outcomes don’t matter because every year there’s another crop to hitch our imaginations to.
The other thing the academy does is ground the club in its place. This is harder to track for us on the site; we’re scattered across the globe and only rarely if ever get to hang out in Firenze. Many of us have no connection to the city other than the one we’ve chosen. For the fans in the city, though, it’s very different. These are the crazies who fill up the Curva Fiesole (or Ferrovia for now). Especially in a season like this one—dozens of personnel moves—they need to feel a connection to their home. Having guys like Martinelli, who grew up watching games in the Curva, provides that connection in a way that no big money signing can.
That’s not the sort of thing Paratici’s paid to worry about. His job is to assemble the best collection of talent. If he decides the current group of teens isn’t good enough, he should dangle them in front of other teams now, when that dream of limitless potential is still there. For him, the academy isn’t a chance to add cheap talent that the fans will connect with. It’s a dice roll in the hopes that one of these guys comes up big and provides a plusvalenza.
So while I think Paratici sold Comuzzo at his lowest value and could have reasonably kept Amatucci and Balbo as depth options, I trust his evaluations. No, my concern is that this is all part of Paratici’s furious dePradèfication. I couldn’t agree more with wiping most of the former DS’s fingerprints off the team. He ran the club into the ground. Paratici, however, seems a bit too eager to extirpate every trace of his predecessor, even if it means getting rid of players who could help Fiorentina now or in the future. That’s bad process and bad process should worry you more than some teenager’s role with the senior side.
