Serie A 2020/21: Fiorentina vs Sampdoria – tactical analysis

Last Friday at the Stadio Artemio Franchi in Florence, Fiorentina played host to Sampdoria in the Serie A. Giuseppe Iachini’s men got off to a decent start this season with two impressive performances, beating Torino 1-0 in the opening game of the season and narrowly losing to last season’s runners-up Inter 4-3, in the following game.

Sampdoria on the other hand had started this Serie A season woefully. Under legendary football manager Claudio Ranieri, they failed to pick up a single point from their opening two games of the league campaign, losing to the champions of the two top-flight Italian leagues from last season, in Juventus and Benevento.

Against Benevento, despite being 2-0 up early in the game, Ranieri admitted that his side deserved to lose, and so going into this affair against an in-form La Viola, Ranieri’s men were far from the favourites. However, they managed to pull off a surprising win with a wonderful chip late on in the game from Valerio Verre.

This article will be a tactical analysis of I Blucerchiati’s win over Fiorentina. It will be an in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of both sides in their tactics, throughout the game, as well as taking a look at where each team could have improved in their set-up.

Lineups and formations:

For La Viola, Iachini named practically the same lineup as he had done in every game so far this season. The formation was exactly the same too with the use of the 3-5-2.

The only change of note was the absence of Franck Ribery. Ribery supposedly failed the fitness tests leading up to the game and so was deemed not fit to play. His replacement was the young-Serbian, Dusan Vlahovic. This was a huge miss for Fiorentina as Ribery has shown superb quality with his goal involvements and overall link-up play and has been a crucial cog in the attacking wheel since Iachini took over at the end of last year.