Fiorentina File: Roma 4 Fiorentina 0
As Roma have won all 10 home games this season and we never seem to play well at the Olimpico be it Lazio or Roma I was not at all confident of a result. I was correct. Fiorentina played 3 at the back, one of whom was a midfield holding player Sanchez acquired from Aston Villa who was totally out of his depth. We just about held out in the first half but the big centre forward Dzeko who was at Manchester City was causing us problems and it was he that opened the scoring when he was given too much room. In the second half Roma added another 3. Our defensive record is worse than bottom place Pescara.
Over the last few years we have sold our jewels – Nastasic and Jovetic to Manchester City, Caudrado and Alonso to Chelsea – for 100m euros. We fans are annoyed that the owners have not invested funds in players to keep Fiorentina at the right level which is top four. Selling the best players sends a negative message to fans and any new coach’s second question after the amount of his salary is the amount of the budget. Besides this our concern is that the next jewel playmaker Federico Bernardeschi, 22 and a regular in the national team, will be the next to go to one of the major Spanish or English clubs. Fiorentina are probably paying him a fortune, not to keep him but to bind him to a long contract so they can cash in.
I was so depressed about Viola that I called Alan Tanner whose team has gone from Europa Cup finalist to bottom of the Championship in 5 years. We spoke of Roy Hodgson one of the very few British managers to work abroad. I asked him the reason for this scarcity. He said that the great British managers whom he cited as Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley were miner’s sons and Alex Ferguson a tool worker who all had a strong working class ethic and sense of the collective. These qualities are required for the British squad but the modern cosmopolitan player with his headphones on and millions in his bank account has a less attuned attitude to the collective. Alan said that West Ham’s star player Dmitri Payet was sitting in isolation in the team canteen whilst Berbatov of Fulham apparently rarely spoke to his teammates.
