Fiorentina announced yesterday that Fabio Grosso has been sacked following 3 straight Serie A defeats to open the season. The 48-year-old leaves a team in crisis, with no identity, as Fiorentina begins looking for its 10th coach of the Commisso era. Grosso’s reign lasted 90 days and covered 4 total games, making him the second-shortest-tenured manager in that span; Gennaro Gattuso famously quit after 22 days in charge and without coaching a single game. It’s the earliest in the season Fiorentina has ever
fired a coach.
It’s easy to see why the Viola pulled the trigger. After a record-setting run of futility to begin last season, the brass brought down the hatchet on Stefano Pioli far too late, leading to months of desperate battling against relegation. By moving quickly, the Commissos and Fabio Paratici hope to avoid a repeat of that situation in what should be a celebratory campaign for the club’s centenary.
Having spent €123 million in transfer fees this summer, the Viola upper management clearly wanted to get the fans back on board in the club’s 100th season. Ignoring the 4-1 pasting of Serie B outfit Benevento in the Coppa Italia, Grosso’s Fiorentina scored 1 goal and conceded 9. Even worse, the team looked incoherent in all phases of play and uncertain of its own identity. None of the players were anywhere near their best. It was as disastrous a start to the season as the club’s ever suffered, including last year’s winless beginning.
It’s perhaps not surprising that Grosso failed. This catastrophe goes on his shelf next to similar ones at Lyon, Sion, and Brescia. He’s led more teams to the bottom of the standings than the top. His most successful and longest-lasting post was Sassuolo, which is the best-run club in Italy (non-Atalanta division). The Neroverdi have a coherent, overarching philosophy that runs from the academy to the first team and covers every facet of recruitment and tactics, making it one of the best ecosystems in Serie A despite a much smaller budget than Fiorentina.
Grosso was the 10th head coach since 2019 (11th if you count Gattuso), when Rocco Commisso bought the club. If you remove Vincenzo Italiano’s 3-year tenure, that’s a Zamparinian 9 in 3 years. Neither fans nor players seem sorry to see Grosso depart but the lack of stability is alarming, hinting that even with the arrival of Paratici, there’s a lack of vision at the highest levels of the organization.
Fiorentina might not have survived another Stefano Pioli situation and deserves credit for moving quickly rather than letting this fester. The season’s still young and there’s plenty of time to turn things around. Europe isn’t out of the picture. A good run will leave these 3 games as just a vague memory, the outline of a nightmare that’s almost forgotten moments after waking.
It’s fair to wonder why Paratici saw Grosso as a good candidate to begin with, though. Like the rest of his World Cup-winning teammates, Grosso has struggled to make an impact as a coach. Sacking the manager just 3 games into the season indicates a lack of trust; the reasonable follow-up question is why that manager was hired in the first place.
We may never get an answer to that question. The question we will have answered is, “Who will be Fiorentina’s next coach?” Unless something drastic happens, it’ll be Paolo Vanoli. The ex-Viola leftback reassembled the shattered pieces that Pioli left last year before getting a handshake and a shove out the door. Given the record of returning coaches in the Commisso era (Montella, Prandelli, Iachini, Pioli), there’s plenty of reason for concern, especially since this team was built with Grosso in mind. We’ll see what the future brings, though; for the record, I trust Vanoli more than Grosso.
