Kean and Fiorentina’s possibilities. But now after him we need an arrival in midfield: Matteo Magrini’s opinion
Striker, striker, striker. For two and a half years, nothing else has been talked about in Florence and, after all, you just need to take a look at the numbers to understand why. A kind of obsession, that for the center forward, which market after market, season after season, has turned into a curse. Nothing strange therefore if all the attention, from the management as well as the fans, has been focused on the search for the number 9 since the beginning of the transfer market. We know how it went, at least for the moment. Moise Kean will arrive from Juventus and the figures of the operation do not leave much room for interpretation: he is the “great striker” which Daniele Pradè and general director Alessandro Ferrari spoke about in the famous end-of-season press conference.
Will it be enough? It’s hard to say. What is certain is that for a club like Fiorentina, especially at this time, finding a strong, reliable centre-forward who didn’t bring with him at least a minimum of uncertainty and who had costs compatible with the company’s accounts was an objectively complex mission. Not impossible, mind you, but definitely complicated.. For several reasons. First: there are fewer and fewer top-level first strikers around Europe. Second: given the recent past (and this is a fault, not an excuse) the managers were not in a position to present themselves on the streets with an unknown name. Let me explain. Betting on Hojlund or Zirkzee as Atalanta and Bologna did at the time would have been an appreciable and certainly very strong signal but we understand the fears from this point of view. After all, if the fans don’t have much faith at the moment, it’s more than understandable and right now, after having talked about the “great number 9”, it was hard to make people digest a bet of that type.
The real problem is that today Fiorentina is a club that struggles to attract even “second-rate” profiles. People like Pavlidis, for example, or like Sorloth. Names that probably would have pleased the people but that before accepting the transfer to Viola they want to wait for more. And then, honestly, those two (but it also applies to others) would have brought with them (at least) the same doubts that accompany Keane. Or is there anyone ready to guarantee that they would have scored 20/25 goals? I do not. And so I come to the value of the attacker arriving from Juve. A boy who has (almost) never expressed his potential but who is at decidedly higher levels than all the recent attackers Fiorentina had. He’s better than Jovic, he’s better than Cabral, he’s certainly of a different caliber than Nzola and Belotti. The problem, and this will be Palladino’s job, is to finally make it pay for what it’s worth.
The question is: what now? Having said that I am almost convinced that between now and the end of the market another centre forward will arrive (Lucca, why not?) I believe we’re not talking enough about the midfield. A void at least as big as the one concerning the role of first striker. For years, Florence has been lacking a great midfielder. One capable (truly) of taking charge of the team and pulling it out of moments of difficulty. Torreira was able to do that in part, then, once the Uruguayan left, nothing. And yet that is where the games are determined. That is the heart of every team, and it is on a player like that that Fiorentina must (and I repeat, must) make a big investment. Easy? No. On the contrary. More or less the same argument made for the search for a striker applies, but if it is true that they want to “raise the bar” and that there is “great ambition” then that operation will also be good for measuring them, those ambitions. “It would be enough” to guess that purchase, to guarantee a nice leap up. Look what happened to Lazio and Milan: they lost Milinkovic-Savic and Tonali, and their performance (especially in terms of balance) suffered dramatically.
