A new season. A new title image. A new challenge.
The next phase of my Fiorentina story on FM19 has begun, as we look to build on a promising first campaign and challenge for Champions League qualification. A strong showing in the Europa League would be quite nice as well.
TRANSFERS OUT
Let’s start with the headline story from our summer transfer window. After two prolific seasons, Giovanni Simeone has left Fiorentina for a fresh challenge… and my goodness, have we made some profit on him!
Lyon were first to make a move for Gio, but their derisory bid was quickly rejected. West Ham were at least willing to reach an acceptable deal, and it appeared that our leading scorer was heading for east London. Then another Premier League team completely blew the Hammers’ bid out of the water.
€51million. That’s a little over £44.5million in Brexit currency… and if Simeone plays 50 league games for Everton, that’ll go up to the equivalent of £56million.
Even in today’s market, that’s not bad business. To put that into perspective, Fiorentina’s previous record sale was that of Rui Costa, who joined Milan for almost 85 billion lire (just under €44million in today’s money) in 2001.
While we were raking in the cash, a part of me worried how losing such a highly influential player would impact team dynamics. Despite losing his Argentine compatriot, captain Germán Pezzella reassured me at the start of pre-season that everything was fine:
Now here’s a summary of all those players who left the Artemio Franchi on permanent cash deals. I’m obviously not including players who left on free transfers, none of whom were particularly important:
Our other senior striker from last season – Cyril Théréau – returned to his native France on a cut-price deal. Brest have just been promoted to Ligue 1, so the 36-year-old will have at least one more season at the top level.
We also said farewell to Gilberto, who impressed in fits and starts during the second half of last season. With a new right-back coming in, I could not guarantee the Brazilian the first-team football he was after, so we let him move on to pastures new in Austria.
The remaining four players were loaned out to other clubs and had no futures at Fiorentina, so we flogged them off for a total of just over €10million. I was particularly to squeeze €4million out of Sunderland – now managed by Roberto Di Matteo, no less – for surplus right-back Lorenzo Venuti.
In terms of outgoing loans, there are far too many to list them all. Most of the deals involve Primavera players who’ve been farmed out to lower-league clubs, but there were a few more recognisable names also on that list.
Sitting on our bench for another season wasn’t going to give Bartlomiej Dragowski much good, so I let our Polish backup goalkeeper join Luzern in Switzerland for a year. Defensive midfielder Abdou Diakhaté and left-back David Hancko are hoping to gain invaluable Serie A experience with Empoli and Salernitana respectively.
I gave young forwards Simone Minelli and Rafik Zekhnini a full pre-season to see if they were first-team ready, but loaned them out when it became clear they weren’t quite there. Minelli is now back in Serie C with Rieti, where he needs to impress to earn a new contract with us. Norway international Zekhnini – who was scarcely used by FC Twente last season – will hope to see more action in Germany with Eintracht Frankfurt.
TRANSFERS IN
Let’s start our recap of the new signings with an… ahem, old new signing. Greek defender Giorgos Antzoulas was actually on loan to our Primavera team last season, but I signed him for €2million after his impressive performances in training convinced me to make the deal permanent. He’s a determined, no-nonsense centre-half who might see some first-team action if we ever have a crisis in that part of the field.
I’m hoping I won’t have to call on Rocco Romaniello too much if our inside-forwards struggle. Our Head of Youth Development plucked him from Serie C and thought he had enough potential to give him a 12-month contract. We’ll see about that.
The first of my seven senior signings was Almamy Touré, whom we first met in January after he agreed to a Bosman move from Monaco. The 23-year-old Malian is a complete wing-back who loves to bomb forward and has solid 12s to 15s across his key attributes. I’ve a feeling he could be a fantastic acquisition.
We also know about Nicolás Benedetti already, having struck a €600,000 deal with Deportivo Cali back in May. The young attacking midfielder has demonstrated great creativity throughout pre-season, as you’ll see in Part 13. Indeed, Benedetti has also been dubbed “the next Carlos Valderrama”, though I don’t think he’ll ever come close to bettering the great Colombian playmaker’s iconic hairstyle.
At €12.5million, Domenico Berardi was my most expensive signing of the summer, and arguably my riskiest. He scored six goals and set up four last season as his beloved Sassuolo were relegated, making him available for transfer.
Even so, I reckon we could have a capable left-footed attacker on our hands here. Berardi is an agile forward with excellent technique, and he seems to enjoy big matches. Oh yes, and he can take a mean penalty.
19-year-old Sandro Tonali is a spirited playmaker with exceptional potential. He made 40 appearances in Serie B for Brescia before we invoked his €6.75million release clause. I will take it slowly blooding Tonali into the team, but I’m understandably very excited about a man who is very professional and composed for his age.
Here’s another Italy Under-21s starlet for you. Pietro Pellegri became the world’s most expensive 16-year-old when Monaco bought him from Genoa for €25million. Two years on, the physical centre-forward is ready for regular top-flight football.
Pellegri showed glimpses of his ability in pre-season and looked to be a cool finisher who could be effective both aerially and on the ground. His limited experience aside, the only concern I have about Pietro is his Light-Hearted personality, which implies that he might not be particularly professional.
When I was looking for a new frontman to replace Simeone, my first choice was actually AC Milan’s Patrick Cutrone, who was 21 and rather more established at the top level. Though Cutrone was apparently interested in joining us on loan, Milan weren’t interested in that kind of deal, and they wanted ridiculous money to sell him.
I spent pretty much the entire transfer window looking for a more experienced striker who could contend with Pellegri and our other teenage hitman Dusan Vlahovic. I also wanted another right-sided forward, lest we had problems with Berardi. Eventually, La Liga champions Atlético Madrid agreed to lend us two of their attackers for the season.
Nikola Kalinic is back at Fiorentina for his second spell at the club, having scored 28 Serie A goals in Viola colours from 2015 to 2017. These days, the unpredictable striker is best-known for having a hissy fit at the 2018 World Cup and being sent home long before Croatia reached the Final.
I’m going to look past that misdemeanour, because the 31-year-old is very hard-working and beastly in the air. He is also adept with either foot, which is another bonus.
Five days later, right at the end of the transfer window, Kalinic was joined in Florence by another of his Atlético mates. Luciano Vietto might have flopped at Fulham last season, but the 25-year-old Argentine can cause all sorts of problems for opposition left-backs. He’s agile, intelligent, has great dribbling ability, and he loves to move into channels.
Finally, a quick shout-out to a player who’s returned to the Fiorentina fold after a year-long loan at Sampdoria. I was going to sell Riccardo Saponara this summer, but the advanced playmaker’s flamboyance and crisp passing has won me over. The 27-year-old will provide extra depth in midfield.
STAFF CHANGES
There’s also been plenty of movement on the staff front, and as you can tell, I’ve placed particular emphasis on bolstering my coaching team. Rui Barbosa – formerly of Wolves – was appointed as our second goalkeeping coach, with Salvatore Foti and Cristian Raimondi also coming on board as possession and attacking coaches respectively.
A more left-field appointment was that of ex-Oldham full-back and manager Dean Holden, who became one of my defensive coaches. I only turned to the Northern Irishman because he was unemployed and all the other coaches I wanted had decided to stay at their current clubs. (Here’s an interesting fact: Holden is married to a former children’s TV presenter – Danielle Nicholls. I used to watch her on CITV in the late 1990s.)
I could have done with having another Briton on board, especially with our Premier League scout Ian Atkins having jumped ship to Tottenham. He was replaced by Fabrício Souza, who became the second Brazilian addition to our scouting team. (I neglected to mention it at the time, but the erstwhile Milan left-back Serginho joined our staff in January.)
Oh yes, and we’ve brought in a Sports Scientist, because we’re fancy and modern. Iosu Sesma isn’t great (his Sports Science attribute is 12), but he’ll do for now.
PRE-SEASON FRIENDLIES
With European football to prepare for this season, I organised seven pre-season friendlies, rather than the six we played last time out. Pezzella would sadly miss most of them after suffering an ankle ligament injury in training. You also won’t see Kalinic or Vietto, as they were both signed very late in the window.
Our first opponents were Albissola – a very young club based near Genoa who’d enjoyed a meteoric rise to Serie B after four consecutive promotions. They kept us goalless in the first half, though that was largely due to some awful hitting-and-hoping on our part. We racked up over 30 shots on goal, but only a handful were even on target.
We spared ourselves from embarrassment with a change of tactic and won comfortably, thanks to goals from FOUR first-time Viola scorers. Benedetti announced himself to Viola fans with a couple of assists for Pellegri and Nikola Milenkovic. The Colombian magician then got on the scoresheet after being set up by left-back Maximiliano Olivera, who rounded off proceedings with a second assist in stoppage time for Diakhaté.
Next up was a mini-tour of China, starting with a match against Ezequiel Lavezzi and his Hebei team-mates. Despite losing a holding midfielder to a cynical challenge after just 14 minutes, the hosts got some incredible (China) Fortune from a corner later in the first half.
That left us having to battle back in the second half to avoid defeat. Despite creating loads of opportunities, our breakthrough didn’t come until the 73rd minute, when Vlahovic flicked in a corner from Minelli.
Tianjin proved slightly less troublesome opponents. Vlahovic hit the target again midway through the first half, and an excellent finish from the returning Saponara sent us into the break leading 2-0.
Worryingly, we got a bit sloppy with our passing after the break. Tianjin would eventually pull a goal back in the closing stages, and we were lucky not to concede again before the final whistle confirmed a narrow 2-1 win.
Upon our return to Italian soil, we paid a visit to our southern feeder club Cosenza, who played in Serie C. Federico Chiesa‘s low free-kick was followed by a couple more early goals, with Jordan Veretout and Berardi each scoring from corners. The hosts caught us napping and scored their first goal in the 32nd minute, but things were still looking very comfortable for us.
Veretout added a second goal in the 70th minute, shortly before young defender Antzoulas broke his Viola duck. That made it 5-1, though Cosenza would have the last laugh after bagging another goal from a direct counter-attack. Conceding twice against a team that was two divisions below us was not exactly promising…
…but our next match highlighted the enormous scoring potential we had, particularly in midfield. Benedetti took all of eight minutes to score a brace against Serie D minnows Lucchese. Also netting twice – either side of the break – was playmaker Christian Nørgaard, who had NEVER previously scored for Fiorentina.
Valentin Eysseric was our other first-half scorer, and we got a couple more goals in the second half to take us up to 7-0. Under-20s forward Josip Maganjic got himself off the mark before teeing up Saponara for the final blow. I think that match might have been just a little too easy for us…
Ah, here we go. A proper contest. I tested out my cautious counter-attacking tactic against RB Leipzig in our first home friendly, and it held up surprisingly well. We withstood everything the Germans threw at us, and Olivera made another strong case to be kept on as Cristiano Biraghi‘s deputy.
Red Bull didn’t give Leipzig wings, though it did give one of our wingmen a rush of blood to the head. Half-time substitute Berardi hadn’t even been on the field for 30 seconds when he flew into a late challenge on a visiting player, earning him a red card and an early bath (not that he needed one).
Berardi’s stupidity made us rather less effective on the counter, though our 10 men still created a few decent scoring opportunities. In the end, I was just content with a draw.
We wrapped up another unbeaten pre-season with a thrilling win over Brøndby. Pellegri gave us an early opener, only for a mistake by Milenkovic to effectively cancel it out just two minutes later. Our new Danish goal machine Nørgaard then came to the rescue, driving us into a 2-1 half-time lead against his former employers.
Touré produced his first Viola assist eight minutes into the second half, setting up Veretout with an excellent right-wing cross. Pellegri then secured a brace from the penalty spot before our Nordic visitors salvaged a last-minute consolation through midfielder Simon Tibbling. Ironically, Tibbling was one of the players I had previously considered signing as a rival to Nørgaard in the regista role.
PRE-SEASON REVIEW
A certain Football Manager half-time team talk springs to mind when I think of this pre-season: “Things are going well, but I know you are capable of even better.”
While we didn’t lose any of our seven warm-up matches, there were a few too many scares for my liking. Milenkovic is still somewhat susceptible to mistakes, and a lot of the goals we’re conceding tend to come when an opponent is left one-on-one with our goalkeeper. If that continues, I’ll have to consider either giving Alban Lafont a ‘sweeper keeper’ role (so that he can try to clean up any defensive messes) or dropping the defensive line a bit deeper.
At the other end, it was pleasing to see our more offensive players bag plenty of goals, which will no doubt boost their confidence. Simeone aside, we didn’t have any prolific scorers last term, and our attackers need to chip in a lot more this season if we’re to achieve our goals. Speaking of which…
We’ve still got quite a lot of the Simeone money left over, and we’re slightly under the wage budget. If there’s a part of our game that badly needs strengthening in January, there’s more than enough in the kitty to get what I want.
The players were alarmed at the thought of challenging for a top-four finish when I first set out my targets in May. Bearing that in mind, I was rather more conservative when the board asked what I planned to achieve.
Fiorentina got to the Coppa Italia Quarter Finals last year, and the board expect at least the same again. We’ll start in Round 1 against a Serie B side – either Sassuolo or Cittadella – in January, so that should be simple enough.
Getting out of our Europa League group is a must, though the board are expecting us to reach the Round of 16. While I’d like to think we can advance further, it’s hard to think ahead when you don’t even know who you’ll face in the Group Stage. I’d say we are just as likely to end up facing Sevilla as we are a team of Maltese farmers.
A top-six finish in Serie A is now the minimum expected of us, and that’s the target as far as the players are concerned. As for me, I’m looking for Champions League qualification, pure and simple. Our first few games of the Serie A season – the first three in particular – will really test our credentials:
Now that’s what I call a brutal start.
With my summer transfer business sorted and pre-season completed, I’m now in a position to give you a full squad and tactics report. However, that will have to wait until Part 13, so come back tomorrow to see how we’re shaping up. I might also include the first two league games of the new season if you ask nicely.
“Forza viola!”
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