Fiorentina 4 Verona 3
Stefano Ursolini watches a classic encounter
Its a cliche that Italian football is boring. It was once in the cynical days of catennaccio but now you have as much chance of watching an exciting game in the serie a as in the Premier league. More so if you follow Fiorentina. Last night at the eccentric hour for us of 7 we played Hellas Verona , who are one position below us. And it was a seven goal thriller. Two of our favourite sons returned to the Renaissance City. In the main stand was the greatest player ever, the legendary Batistuta who scored 2 goals every 3 games for la Viola. In the Verona shirt was Luca Toni, the old warhorse of a centre forward who wore the purple shirt with distinction . Verona and Fiorentina are twinned so here was an atmosphere of fraternal warmth in the stadium where fans were not segregated. And we saw a classic.
There were 4 goals in the first 15 minutes when Verona twice took the lead. In the second half the end to end play like a basketball match continued when I Viola went 4-2 up. When Verona had a man redcarded we thought we were surely home but another Verona goal had us gnawing our finger nails.
Our stand out player was Valera Borja a Spaniard from Villareal who netted twice . I have been in touch with Alan Tanner after the sacking of Martin Jol. I made the point that Fiorentina have been adapt in finding players in the market who in every sense have added value to the team and we would not tolerate a policy of buying old players as those are all that we can afford. That is an excuse for inefficient scouting and poor team building.