Lausanne 1-0 Fiorentina: Match report

Pre-match

Paolo Vanoli did some wacky stuff with his wingbacks, although he was constrained to make some rotation due to minute accumulation. Still Eddy Kouadio making his first senior start on the right with Christian Kouamé in his first Viola appearance in 364 days on the left was bold. The rest of the side was the obvious second-choice guys, although at least Tommaso Martinelli finally got a start.

First half

It was a slow start, which was perhaps to be expected from two teams struggling for form as badly as these two are. I suppose that Lausanne was slightly better, keeping Fiorentina in its own half, but this was pretty wretched stuff. The 1000ish Viola fans in attendance did their best to shield the pitch with smoke from flares, making it quite difficult to see the action, and that was just about the only positive. I cannot recall a more insipid 45 minutes this season and I guess that’s an achievement of some kind.

Second half

It was pretty much the exact same thing, aside from Enzo Kana-Biyik nearly scoring a peach of a volley, until the hour mark, when Kana-Biyik picked up his head and crossed for Gabriel Sigua to head home from close range. Martinelli got a paw to the ball but couldn’t keep it out.

Seconds later, Martinelli made a fantastic save on Beyatt Lekoueiry. The Mauritanian came close again moments later after another surging run but for Mattia Viti’s block. Vanoli brought on his so-called big guns (really so many slingshots) in Moise Kean, Albert Guðmundsson, and Rolando Mandragora, but to no avail. The Viola remained pathetic on a level that defies description and never looked like equalizing.

Full time

Goals: Sigua 58’ (ass. Kana-Biyik)

Cards: Lekoueiry 90’; Kean 73’, Fortini 85’

What’s next

Yet another defeat means Fiorentina finishes the Conference League league phase in 16th. Fiorentina had a chance to skip the qualifying round with a win but instead will get an extra home-and-away set of games in February. The draw’s on 16 January and the games will fall between Como/Pisa and Pisa/Udinese, which will provide us with a nice little distraction from what will by then be certain relegation.

I don’t know what else to say at this point. Fiorentina’s terrible and shouldn’t exist. There’s not even any reason to drive your plow over its bones and sow salt in the furrows because the Viola land is already barren beyond description. The only real questions left this season are 1) who ends up coaching the team, because Vanoli’s almost certainly done, and 2) how many of these flaccid underachievers are on the roster after match week 38. This is a wasteland, a desert, and nothing can grow here.

One conclusion: Vanoli’s done

Every year, teams go into freefall. Fiorentina’s just one in a company that stretches back more than a century. That’s the nature of the game. It happens to every club eventually and this just happens to be the season that the wheel’s selected the Viola (with a big assist from 7+ years of laughably bad management). I won’t say there’s no shame in it but it happens. Them’s the breaks. Et cetera.

What interests me is what happens with those teams. Sometimes it’s just a skill issue, a collection of players that don’t have the requisite ability. When that happens, there’s never any question about effort or commitment. They’re doing their best and it’s just not good enough. The manager could come up with any plan but, due to the talent gap, it doesn’t really matter. The squad understands and keeps playing hard for the manager.

What’s happening here, though, is different. This collection of players probably wasn’t ever going to achieve anything remarkable but should possess some baseline of competence. Instead, they’ve sulked and bickered and underachieved and now here they (and we) are. This group is crying out for leadership, for someone to take accountability for the collapse and get things back on track.

Vanoli isn’t that guy. This isn’t to say that he’s a bad coach. He got a raw deal at Torino last year and a rawer one in Florence. This mess is beyond any one person (except the one right at the top of the org chart) and it’s unfair that the mister’s picking up the bill for a meal someone else ate. We’ve been in that workplace and it’s always terrible.

That said, his reticence to shake things up has compounded the problem. I don’t think it’s a matter of courage. Rather, I think that he’s trying to manage a delicate social situation between the players in the squad and it’s well beyond him, and maybe anyone. The only way to fix it is to reduce the variables. That means shipping out the most vocal malcontents, sure, but it also means getting another voice in the captain’s chair. Again, that’s less about Vanoli and more about the overall context of the team. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.