The Fiorentina Project — February ’26, Part I
“Two points from six, a treatment room like a field hospital, and a goal I watched through a mouthful of dinner”
The wheels did not come off in February. That would imply drama, a bang, a smoking wreck by the roadside. No — this was slower and more humiliating than that. This was a tyre going down over the course of a fortnight, the car listing gently to one side while the driver insisted, to anyone who’d listen, that his expected goals were excellent, actually.
Two games. Two draws. And here is the part I cannot make peace with: I did not need to win both. I needed to win one. Just one. And I contrived, through a combination of individual calamity, striker profligacy and a plate of pasta, to win neither.
Fiorentina 1-1 Roma
Lucca won and buried a penalty inside nine minutes, and let me be honest with you, because we’re friends: that penalty flatters the xG. Strip out the spot-kick and the 1.76 on the summary screen becomes a far more ordinary afternoon. But we were still the better side, still had 63% of the ball, and still should have seen it out — right up until the equaliser, which was not so much a goal as a group project in negligence. Koné declined to challenge for the header. Comuzzo watched Bonny peel off him and run, unaccompanied, into the space behind. And Mamardashvili, my £67m goalkeeper, came charging from his line like a man late for a bus, allowing Bonny to roll him and score into the empty net. Three players, three separate failures, one goal. It takes real teamwork to defend that badly. And to cap it, Pubill limped off on eighteen minutes — my only recognised right-back, gone, in the one position I cannot cover.
Torino 2-2 Fiorentina
Two goals up. Sottil finished a Koné pass, and then Fabio Miretti — Fabio Miretti, who missed a penalty at Cesena and has spent a month in the doghouse — stepped up and buried one from the spot. Redemption. 2-0. Sixty-six percent possession. Cruise control.
Torino pulled one back through Vitinha. Then, on 81 minutes, Vitinha had a second chalked off — and to my credit, I read it exactly as the warning it was. I shut up shop. Went conservative. Sent on the reinforcements to manage the final ten minutes like a sensible adult. The game was there to be strangled. Unfortunately, the man responsible for strangling it — me — had by this point wandered off to eat his dinner, and so it was through a mouthful of something that I watched Gineitis equalise on 86 minutes. There is no xG graphic for not paying attention. There should be. I’d top the league.
The Lucca problem. Sixteen goals, joint-second in Serie A, and I would not swap him for anyone. But across these two games he also spurned his customary three or four gilt-edged chances, and a striker who scores sixteen while missing thirty is a striker who is single-handedly keeping you up and keeping you awake. The answer, of course, is Omorodion — my £170k-a-week battering ram — who could not feature in either game because he has food poisoning. A man whose ligaments already have the structural integrity of wet paper has now discovered he cannot safely eat, either. He will never get fit at this rate. I am beginning to suspect the club canteen is working for Iain.
The table, then. Fifth. Forty-nine points. Inter (60) have vanished over the hill, and Napoli (53), Bologna (52) and Milan (50) have all edged in front. We also sit, proudly, atop one table and one table only — the Injury League, the most broken squad in all of Italy, five men down and a right-back position now staffed entirely by hope.
Iain, needless to say, has been in touch. I did not read it. I know what it says.
Next up, the fixture computer’s idea of a joke: Inter at home, then Napoli in the Coppa semi-final, then Bologna away. The three best sides I could possibly face, arriving precisely as my squad resembles a triage tent, my strikers cannot stay fed, and my form resembles a shrug.
I was third a fortnight ago. I keep telling myself that. It doesn’t help.
