Fiorentina file: Fiorentina 3 Club Brugge 2
Art business took me to West Sussex.
An art collector in Petworth may be interested in selling a Giorgio di Chirico. Collectors always say they are not interested in selling but, if the price is right …
The tactic is not to disclose the net price. An auction house deducts a premium, VAT and “transportation” off the hammer price – and a dealer his commission often as much as 50% – but neither is disclosed.
There are other issues of condition and provenance.
An additional problem for me was how and where to watch Fiorentina’s semi-final Conference league game v Club Brugge.
I duly contacted Alan Tanner.
He said the game was on TNT, but he personally only had access the regular channels that were not covering the match.
He did have an interest as Dennis Odoi, who used to play for Fulham, now wore the 6 shirt for the Belgian side.
Scott Parker was for a brief period their manager.
In the end I followed the game via the commentary on the Fiorentina website. The commentators were vocal and passionate, especially when la Viola scored the winner in extra time.
Last year Fiorentina reached the final of the Conference League, losing to West Ham.
Once I would say Arsenal were the equivalent of us, but now it’s more like West Ham, Brighton or Brentford.
Italy may get an extra place in the Champions League – Atalanta won at Liverpool and Bologna under Thiago Motta are having an excellent season.
Roberto de Zerbi is rated as a young coach, as is Francesco Faroli (de Zerbi’s goalkeeping coach at Sassuolo) at Nice.
However, you can only really rank Inter with Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Real Madrid and PSG.
