The transfer window’s closed in Italy but just barely open elsewhere and Fiorentina has taken advantage by selling Christian Kouamé to Greek outfit Aris FC of Thessalonika. I can’t find any reliable reporting of the numbers involved but my guess is that it’s a pretty small fee to allow the Theós tou polémou (God of War, which is quite a nickname) to absorb his salary: the Viola owed him €3.2 million annually until 2027 and his new contract also runs until 2027. I don’t think it’s too hard to reach
a conclusion.
Kouamé spent 6 years with the Viola, although he was loaned away for a year and a half and missed a fair amount of time with injuries as well. He was the second-longest tenured Fiorentina player after Luca Ranieri and was by all accounts a lovely guy and even a good upstairs neighbor. He’d barely played this year—104 minutes spread over 4 appearances—as he recovered from another knee ligament issue. That he couldn’t find a role even when Paolo Vanoli was desperately looking for wingers and strikers made it pretty clear that his time in Florence was coming to a close.
It’s a huge bummer for a player who was as promising a forward as any in Serie A at one point. He scored 5 goals and assisted 2 more in just 11 appearances for Genoa in 2019 before blowing out his knee and missing a lot of time, during which Daniele Pradè swooped in to grab him at a discount. To his immense credit, he rushed back to fitness to help Fiorentina avoid relegation under Giuseppe Iachini even though he clearly wasn’t right physically.
Miscast as a target forward solely due to his vertical leaping ability, he eventually led the club in assists during that first run to the Conference League final, mostly playing as a winger. He then missed the start of the Palladino era with malaria after helping Côte d’Ivoire win AFCON in 2024 before tearing the cruciate ligament in his other knee last year at Empoli.
I still think there’s a world in which he and Dušan Vlahović formed the most potent striker pairing in Serie A, with Kouamé playing off the Serbian and darting into space in behind. He was a fun forward, explosive and enthusiastic but still graceful; that he reinvented himself after the injuries as a dogged wide player who assiduously tracked back and always gave his all for the team speaks volumes about his character. I wish him nothing but the best in Thessaloniki.
Thanks, Chris. It didn’t go how we wanted it to go but you never complained and never stopped working, and that’s all anyone can ask.
