The bright future of Stefano Pioli’s Fiorentina

In Italys Serie A, Juventus, Inter and Milan are the three traditionally huge football clubs. Just behind them we have the likes of Roma, Lazio and Napoli. One club that also belongs to the group just behind the three huge striped teams is Fiorentina. La Viola have beautiful shirts, a lovely stadium and superstars such as Gabriel Batistuta, Roberto Baggio and Rui Costa have all had brilliant spells at the club. However, the last few years has been tough for the club and theyve failed to be the European constants they potentially could be.

As this tactical analysis will show though, the future in Florence should be bright with a good coach in Stefano Pioli and a talented group of players assembled by the experienced sporting director Pantaleo Corvino. This analysis will look at Fiorentinas recruitment, Piolis preferred tactics and the statistics behind their season so far.

Fiorentinas recruitment

Corvino is a wily old fox in Italian football. He rose to prominence at the turn of the century at Lecce, where he signed the likes of Cristian Ledesma, Valeri Bojinov and Mirko Vucinic while creating an exciting team. He then moved to Fiorentina in 2005 and built the team that reached the knock-out rounds of the 2009/10 Champions League with players like Luca Toni and Adrian Mutu and then became European mainstays with players like Stevan Jovetic, Adem Ljajic and Artur Boruc.

Whats always been clear in Corvinos work is his contacts in Eastern Europe which hes always used as a cheap market to get talented players he can then sell on for a huge profit. Corvino has now been back at Fiorentina since the summer of 2016 and weve seen him build a substantially younger squad than the one he inherited. Players like Borja Valero, Jakub Blaszczykowski and Nikola Kalinic has left and been replaced with the likes of Giovanni Simeone, Marco Benassi and academy player Federico Chiesa.

Corvino has also signed other young players with potential such as Nikola Milenkovic, David Hancko, Marko Pjaca, Dusan Vlahovic and most recently Jacob Rasmussen and Hamed Traore from Empoli. We can again see him dipping into the Eastern European market with his signings. Theyre proving successful too; Milenkovic was signed for €5m and is destined to leave soon for a around €45-55m.

Corvino has also picked up more experienced players from clubs where they were not perhaps getting the game time they wanted or he simply saw a good player. The likes of Luis Muriel, Jordan Veretout, German Pezzella and Vitor Hugo spring to mind. All four are now vital to the young squad. The addition of Muriel has been very successful so far as hes become the missing link in the front three. With him alongside Simeone and Chiesa, Fiorentina finally have an attacking trio that works together.

The likes of Kevin Mirallas, Pjaca and Riccardo Saponara havent worked as the third attacker but Muriel seems to be just what Piolis attack was missing. By building such a young squad and adding a few more experienced players to the mix, Corvino has been planning for the long-term future. Now we are starting to see the fruits of his work. Next season will be when Fiorentina are really expected to push up the table.

Tactical analysis: Stefano Piolis tactics

Fans of Fiorentina reading this will definitely remember Paulo Sousas spell as coach at the club from 2015/16 and 2016/17. The first six months of his time in charge saw Fiorentina challenge at the top of the table playing an exciting brand of positional play with the likes of Valero, Federico Bernardeschi, Matias Vecino and Josip Ilicic shining.

Every single player of that side, which also included Milan Badelj, Kalinic, Gonzalo Rodriguez and the late Davide Astori, has left the club along with Sousa. Still though, Sousas fluid setup remains. Pioli has made his own tweaks to Sousas system but some principles remain. Lets look at these.

First of all Fiorentina usually defend in a man-orientated 4-4-1-1/4-4-2. This differs from Sousas more positional defence. Whats interesting is the way the team rotates in possession. Sousas side created a 3-2-4-1 but Pioli is more flexible and uses either a 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 in attack. The picture below highlights the attacking shape against Napoli.

They create this shape with the following rotations. The right-back moves into the centre and becomes a third centre-back while the left-back pushes on down the wing. The two central midfielders remain in place centrally while the right-winger stays wide but the left-winger comes inside. The front two then takes up different positions. In the above example the left-winger moves higher and plays quite wide but if they had attacked in a 3-5-2 then he would have acted as a third central midfielder.

Federico Chiesa has become a key man for Pioli, not simply because of his immense talent, but also because of his ability to play wide as well as centrally. That makes him an option for either the touchline-hugging right-wing, the more centered left-wing position or one of the two striker roles.

Chiesas pace makes him one of Fiorentinas main threats. He showed this to devastating effect in the 7-1 mauling of Roma