It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Dodo wants continental football; whether Fiorentina can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Feb 2028
Words at Fiorentina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Robin Gosens is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Cesena will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Dimitri Bisoli has pre-agreed a move to Fiorentina, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Fiorentina, and 1 appearances in 31 say he has earned the hearing.
A performance of 8.20 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings14 Feb 2028
Riccardo Sottil was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.09. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
The chase for Pietro Pellegri ended with $9.5M changing hands and Torino out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Fiorentina can pretend not to have heard.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Pietro Comuzzo wants continental football; whether Fiorentina can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Pietro Pellegri has just signed for Fiorentina, and for once the answer mattered.
In brief
SquadWords at Fiorentina training over how hard people work
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Tommaso Martinelli: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Moise Kean was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
21 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 41 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Player ratings13 Dec 2027
A brace, and Moise Kean takes the afternoon — 8.40
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Moise Kean provided it, and the 8.40 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Fiorentina heard it as anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mattia Ievoli is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad13 Dec 2027
Words at Fiorentina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Robin Gosens is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
M'Bala Nzola damages knee ligaments — 120 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 120 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
16 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 27 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
24 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Agustín Albarracín is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
The words a physio says slowly. 87 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 21 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The words a physio says slowly. 94 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Dodo was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
6 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad3 May 2027
Words at Fiorentina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marco Brescianini is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 30 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Moise Kean was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Pietro Comuzzo wins it after the whistle should have gone
91 minutes played. Pietro Comuzzo found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and AS Roma went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
14 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
27 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Moise Kean was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
8.66. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Two goals and a mark of 8.69 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
6 goals in one match, Cher Ndour on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Fiorentina and Bologna.
A performance of 9.02 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Words at Fiorentina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marco Brescianini is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
13 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Moise Kean was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Davide Atzeni is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Some goals win a match and some take one off somebody else. Pietro Comuzzo scored in the 86th minute, Torino had already begun thinking about the journey home, and Fiorentina took the lot.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
Pietro Comuzzo was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.89. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Pietro Comuzzo has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 40 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
33 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
The fee is $6.1M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Südtirol drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Nicola Pietrangeli is living that version at Fiorentina, and it tends to show in the first month.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Moise Kean was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Moise Kean was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Marked 8.55. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Fiorentina.
Boardroom28 Dec 2026
119% of the income goes out in wages at Fiorentina
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Squad28 Dec 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting David De Gea's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. David De Gea knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Pietro Comuzzo did not need any: 7.94, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Rolando Mandragora was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Carlo Evangelista is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 17 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at Fiorentina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Filippo Romagna is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 39 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
2 behind and going nowhere, until Moise Kean decided otherwise. Pisa had done the hard part and then watched it come apart, and the noise at the final whistle was the sort a ground keeps.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
A brace, and Moise Kean takes the afternoon — 9.93
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Moise Kean provided it, and the 9.93 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
33 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with David De Gea: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 0 on the scoresheet, 7.28 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Fiorentina heard it as anything else.
David De Gea was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Pietro Comuzzo, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.86
A mark of 7.86 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Moise Kean was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Pietro Comuzzo has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Shots: 14. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Fiorentina hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Boardroom2 Nov 2026
Nobody left the Fiorentina dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Jacopo Fazzini has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Pietro Comuzzo did not need any: 8.92, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Dodo wants continental football; whether Fiorentina can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Juan Rodríguez is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Fiorentina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marin Pongračić is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Moise Kean was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Marked 8.60 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Boardroom21 Sep 2026
Nobody left the Fiorentina dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Cher Ndour wins it after the whistle should have gone
93 minutes played. Cher Ndour found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Genoa went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Three points for Fiorentina, 2‑1 the final word against Genoa in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
256% of the income goes out in wages at Fiorentina
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Defensive actions: 35, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Pietro Comuzzo, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.71
A mark of 7.71 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Dodo was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Riccardo Braschi is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Add another name to the list: Sorrento have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Riccardo Braschi. The answer from Fiorentina has not changed — yet.