The Fabio Grosso era is over after 3 games, 3 losses, 9 goals conceded, and 1 scored. Paolo Vanoli is back in the saddle and trying to herd the Viola back into shape. Much like last year, he’s got a lot to do. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to worry about European games taking up his training sessions and sapping his players’ energy. Instead, he can focus on fixing what’s broken in this team. Even with that extra time, though, he’ll have to focus on a few specific areas of improvement. As far as I can tell, here are the top five.
1. Communicating
This is the most obvious issue and I swear the other four are more concrete. The simple fact is, though, that Grosso’s team never seemed sure of what it was doing. I think that’s a matter of communication more than tactical acumen. For example, he repeatedly stated that Moise Kean wasn’t central to his plans in press conferences, which contributed to the striker’s eventual animosity towards Fiorentina. Alienating the best player is about as bad a way to introduce yourself to a team as exists.
On the field, though, Grosso’s players seemed deeply disorganized. The passivity out of possession might’ve been a tactical choice but it often felt like nobody was sure what the pressing triggers were and thus stayed in the shape at all times. It was risk aversion projected and distorted to a gargantuan parody of itself. Going forward, things were just as disjointed. Aside from a few tidy combinations down the left, every move began with a hopeful thump up to the striker and continued with a lucky bounce. It was all too reliant on individuals doing stuff. Even a team built on winning 1-v-1 battles needs some structure and Grosso couldn’t provide it anything beyond, “Don’t make a mistake.”
Vanoli’s job isn’t necessarily to install the complex, repeatable mechanisms of his old master Antonio Conte. What he needs to do, though, is explain to every player what exactly it is that they do around here. Nobody can do their job when they don’t know what their job is and Paolo Vanoli isn’t shy about telling people what their jobs are. He expects his players to fulfill their roles and he’ll bench anyone who doesn’t. Making sure that every individual knows their role and the overarching design of the team is priority number one.
2. Defending transitions
Fabio Paratici built this Fiorentina to attack directly and quickly, getting bodies forward en masse to overwhelm opponents. Grosso leaned into it, giving two of three central midfielders and both fullbacks license to break, which in turn left the team understaffed at the back. When opponents counterattacked, the pitch opened up to them like a sunny highway with barely an obstacle in sight. Think of Paulo Dybala picking up the ball near midfield and motoring into the final third unopposed to play in Donyell Malen three different times if you want an illustrative example. Frosinone and Torino offered their own variations on the theme as well. It was disastrous.
By now, most people have heard the term “rest defense.” Fiorentina didn’t have one. Too often, opponents attacked just 3 players: 2 centerbacks and a midfielder in front of them. These are the situations that amplify any defensive mistake and make players look slow or dumb or clownish. The simple fact is that very few players can routinely snuff out attackers running at pace. The pitch is too big, the opponents are too talented. Guys who can routinely do that snuffing don’t tend to hang around Florence for long. When the talent doesn’t offer solutions, coaches turn to tactics.
There are a couple of obvious solutions. The first is keeping one of the midfielders deeper. Adding 33% more bodies to break up counters helps a lot. Marco Brescianini and Cher Ndour are at their best breaking into the opposing penalty area but might need to sacrifice for the good of the team, staying home and using their physicality to protect rather than provoke. Keeping at least one fullback lower would also offer more protection. Fiorentina doesn’t have the talent to attack with just three or four and score goals so Vanoli needs to find a balance. Grosso tipped it way too far one way and the new mister has to slide it back.
3. Defending width
I’ve been hammering on this since the summer friendlies and it drove me crazy. Fiorentina’s defense was way too narrow at all times. Grosso’s priority seemed to be defending the gap between fullback and centerback at all costs. That makes some sense: a ball slipped into that channel often results in a shot or a cutback. He went all out to prevent that, though, to the point that it undermined his defensive structure completely because, as the fullbacks collapsed in, they left the opposing wingers/wingbacks in space. So much space. So. Much. Space.
Benevento cottoned on pretty quickly and created some danger by hitting long diagonals to the wide areas. Roma, Frosinone, and Torino took notes and exploited the same glaring weakness. All they had to do was keep someone high and wide and switch the play to them. Serie A forwards are good enough to bring the ball down and build up a head of steam while driving at a static defender, which makes it easy to go past them. Time and again, opponents hit that pass and profited.
I understand Grosso’s reasoning. His rightbacks are all shaky defensively. Víctor Valdepeñas on the left is a converted centerback and isn’t used to defending the wide areas. By sticking to the same approach even after the players demonstrated that it didn’t suit them, Grosso doomed them to structural hell. Even a shaky defender has a better chance of stopping a skillful winger on the initial pass than when that winger’s had time to settle the ball and generate momentum. Valdepeñas misjudged that high switch a dozen times in these first games; the last example was Torino’s winner.
I expect Vanoli will widen his defense, accepting a bit more room in the channels at the expense of sticking closer to the wingers. Keeping another midfielder deeper could help as well since the regista won’t be solely responsible for shielding openings on both sides of the pitch. Paradoxically, aggressive pressing higher up could help as well: if opponents don’t have time and space to pick that diagonal pass, it’s no longer a threat. Grosso’s insistence on risk aversion above all else paradoxically put his defense at greater risk than anything else he did. Vanoli should be bolder if he wants more security.
4. Building from deep
Fiorentina’s only good passer in deep positions is Fagioli. The other midfielders are all ball-carriers rather than playmakers. The fullback are likewise dribblers and overlappers. Of the centerbacks, only Marin Pongračić has shown the ability to break the lines and even that ability comes and goes. Opponents know that if they can take Nicky Beans out of the game, they can render Fiorentina entirely one-dimensional, reliant on long balls out the back. Mateo Pellegrino’s a decent hold-up striker but not good enough to be the only outlet, especially since David de Gea and his defense aren’t exactly pinpoint distributors.
With such limitations, there’s only so much Grosso could’ve done. Deep buildup, however, is also the most structured part of the in-possession side of the game, which gives the coach more control over that phase than any other. Grosso was unwilling or unable to create a structure that 1) concealed or minimized his players’ weaknesses as passers and 2) offered multiple solutions to getting out of his own third.
Vanoli’s got a leg up here because he dealt with this same problem last year. He didn’t solve it but he figured out how to coexist with it. For my money, the solution is dropping another player or two into the deep areas. This provides more angles for out balls and more simple passes that won’t tax limited players as heavily. If the opponent sends another marker to follow those extra deep options, it opens space higher up so that the eventual long ball has a better chance of reaching a Fiorentina forward, who then has fewer obstacles between himself and the goal.
The other obvious solution is Dodô, who’s been the answer to this question for years. His ability to burst past a defender allows Fiorentina to move itself out of danger. Even if he only dribbles to midfield before dumping the ball off to a teammate, opponents will scramble back into their defensive shape and stop pressing as hard because the risk/reward balance chances the farther from goal you get. I don’t think João Mário or Valepeñas can reliably beat a defender in deep positions as consistently so Dodô might be back in the XI for the foreseeable.
5. The goddamn set pieces
Last year, Fiorentina was the worst team in Serie A at defending set pieces. The inability to defend corners and free kicks was a weekly fixture in the What We Learned section of every match report. Paratici obviously identified that as an area that he could improve pretty easily by bringing in a bunch of tall and strong players. I’m halfway convinced that Radu Drǎgușin’s really only here to get his noggin on dead balls rather than defend in open play. I expected massive improvement in this department under Grosso.
And you know what? Grosso and his set piece coach Giuseppe Foti did just that. Fiorentina hasn’t conceded a set piece goal this season and has mostly defended those situations fairly well, although Frosinone did cause some problems. No, my beef with Grosso in this regard is that Fiorentina’s attacking set pieces were almost hilariously bad. Their primary feature was Franco Mastantuono putting in a low ball that hit the first defender in the midsection, allowing opponents to break the other way with the Viola all out of sorts.
I don’t share the Proper Football Man disdain for targeting the front post at corners. Sure, when that first defender clears the ball, it looks bad. But making first contact means putting the opposing defense under a ton of pressure, as we’ve seen this year: look at Drǎgușin’s assist for back post demon Luca Ranieri against Benevento. Sure, you have to consider the opposition, but it works. Adding a bunch of burly dudes should only increase Fiorentina’s options and danger from dead balls.
Vanoli’s ambivalence about set pieces last year was notable. He explained after his first game that they weren’t something he’d had time to train and it seemed like he never prioritized them, at least if the team’s hopelessness at ever corner and free kick was any indication. He’s got much better tools this time around, though, and needs to use them. Set piece goals have never been a greater point of emphasis and the new mister will struggle to turn things around if his team ends up at a net deficit from those situations.
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