High Flying Fiorentina Hit Five Leaving Roma in Ruins
A look at Raffaele Palladino’s Florentine revolution as their demolition puts Ivan Juric on the brink in Rome.
Sunday night in Florence was not simply a tale of two cities but of two teams and two managers in very different places. For Raffaele Palladino and Fiorentina, there was a festival feel as they feasted on goals at the Stadio Artemio Franchi. A dismal 5-1 defeat for Roma left the ominous impression of the grim reaper arriving at Ivan Juric’s door, only eight games into his tenure. A stay of execution may have been granted for now, but there appears to be a space reserved for the Croat in the ever-growing scrapyard of Giallorossi managers under the Friedkin regime (Everton fans beware!).
What made matters worse for Juric was who he was facing in the opposition dugout. Raffaele Palladino, who replaced Vincenzo Italiano as La Viola boss in the summer, had played under Juric at Crotone and Genoa, with the pair having previously spent time together as teammates in the Ligurian capital. It was there, in Genoa, that the two picked up their coaching philosophies under the tutelage of current Atalanta boss Gian Piero Gasperini. Both moulded in the aggressive man-marking, high-intensity style of the godfather of modern Italian coaching, it was the junior apprentice, Palladino, that schooled Juric in the style of his master on Sunday evening.
The Palladino Story
At the age of 40, Naples-born Palladino has already established himself as one of the most highly regarded names on the Serie A managerial scene. He was thrust into the limelight in September 2022, when newly promoted Monza, who were winless in six, promoted him from their youth team to the top job on a permanent basis.
Anointed by then-owner Silvio Berlusconi and CEO Adriano Galliani (the chief architects of the great Milan side of the late 1980s and 1990s), the surprise appointment drew immediate comparisons with that of Arrigo Sacchi’s in 1987, whom the late Berlusconi plucked from relative obscurity to guide them to back-to-back European Cup triumphs. That Midas touch made an immediate impact, as Palladino masterminded Monza’s first ever Serie A win on his managerial debut against Juventus.
The Neapolitan’s stock continued to rise as he secured salvation for Monza with six games to spare, only losing seven of his first 30 league games (the club had lost five of six when he was given the job). After guiding the Biancorossi to 11th and 12th place finishes, Palladino was offered the chance to take the next step in his coaching odyssey when Fiorentina approached him to replace Vincenzo Italiano, the man who had reached back-to-back UEFA Conference League finals with La Viola.
A Whole New Team
Change was not reserved to the dugout this summer in Florence, with Palladino having to contend with a vast level of upheaval in the playing staff throughout the transfer market. La Viola lost eight regular first-teamers, including the notable departures of Nikola Milenkovic to Nottingham Forest as well as Nicolo Gonzalez, who followed the likes of Dusan Vlahovic, Federico Chiesa, and Roberto Baggio on the well-trodden, if controversial, path from Fiorentina to Juventus. The club were not shy in replacing the many outgoings, with almost a dozen new faces brought in for Palladino to integrate.
Recent evidence would suggest that he has done that seamlessly, with Sunday’s starting XI against Roma containing seven summer signings as well as 19-year-old centre back Pietro Comuzzo, who has received plenty of plaudits in Italy this season since he was handed his full debut by the new boss. Arguably the biggest revelation of the Raffaele Revolution so far, however, has been Sunday’s Man of the Match, Moise Kean.
After bagging a brace against Roma, the Italy international has already scored seven goals this campaign, half as many as he managed in the last four seasons combined. Looking completely revitalised at the Artemio Franchi, his form by September had already impressed Luciano Spalletti enough to recall him to the Nazionale, where he rewarded the faith by scoring his first goal for the Azzurri since 2022. Kean’s backheel flick-pass in the build-up to his opening goal against Roma set the scene for a night where he terrorised the hapless Giallorosso backline, showing signs of the player he threatened to be when he initially broke through at Juventus.
Home Away from Rome
There was at least one good Roman performance in Florence that night; only he too was wearing a violet shirt—Edoardo Bove. Roman born and bred, the 22-year-old was cast aside by his boyhood club in the summer and forced into a move that he never really wanted to make. Handed his debut by Jose Mourinho, Bove has been effusive in his praise for the coach who allowed him to live his dream and become a regular in the Roma team. Bove, however, finally experienced the football appreciation he had been craving upon arriving in Florence after Daniele de Rossi had rejected him in the summer.
While Roma are still technically his parent club (Fiorentina have an option to buy next summer), it was clear that the young midfielder had a point to prove on Sunday night and, truthfully, he exemplified exactly the sort of energy, dynamism, and quality that Roma lacked. Bove left the pitch with a goal, an assist, a penalty won, and a legitimate claim to Moise Kean’s player of the match trophy. After spending the first two decades of his life on the banks of the Tiber, two months beside the River Arno look to have already provided him with a football home.
The Young and the Old
Elsewhere in the Viola team, Andrea Colpani, who followed his manager’s trail from Monza in the summer, played with a joyful exuberance and freedom that would make anyone wonder why one of Serie A’s top dogs didn’t snap him up. Similar could be said of another exciting young prospect in the Fiorentina side, a little-known Spanish shot-stopper who remained off the radar of big clubs for a year or so…
David de Gea, as tends to be the case, looks like a player reborn ever since leaving Manchester United. While his penalty heroics against AC Milan caught international attention at the start of October, he has offered stability and assuredness since coming into the Fiorentina team that are much more reminiscent of his 2015-2018 vintage.
Palladino’s blend of youth and experience, melded into an increasingly coherent structure, has given Fiorentina a different edge this campaign, with the hope being that he can improve on Italiano’s 7th and 8th placed finishes (and maybe even go one step further than those three cup final defeats) and possibly turn La Viola into this season’s Bologna—ironically, where his predecessor left for, currently enjoying a much less successful start to life across the Apennines.
To say it has been a smooth start for the new ‘mister’ (Italian word for ‘gaffer’), however, would not be so accurate. Palladino drew each of his first five games in charge, all against teams Fiorentina would usually expect to beat (newly promoted Parma and Venezia, his old club Monza, and both legs of a UECL play-off against Hungary’s Puskas FC Academy), while only mustering one win from their opening eight in total.
Since then, it has been a completely different story, as the victory against Roma took La Viola up to fourth spot in Serie A following six wins from seven in all competitions, including major scalps at home to Lazio, Milan, and Roma. Sunday’s Roman massacre took their tally to 15 goals scored in the space of eight days, after a similarly resounding 6-0 away thrashing of Lecce and a 4-2 triumph over St. Gallen in Switzerland.
The demolition job of Roma was as comprehensive as the one ongoing behind the goal into which Fiorentina scored three times in the first half, as renovation work on the Curva Fiesole has turned one end of the ground into a building site for the season. Fiorentina’s ultras have, therefore, been temporarily displaced to the other end of the ground, into the Curva Ferrovia—the ‘Railway Stand’—so called after the train lines it backs on to.
Nevertheless, there appears to be no derailing the Raffaele Palladino Express that is only gathering steam at the moment. While sterner tests than such a meek Roma display await the vivacious Viola, the flair and freedom with which they are playing have rolled back the years to the days of Baggio or Batistuta when Fiorentina were appointment viewing.
About The Author
