Paratici could be the first sign of a Fiorentina sale

We’re still waiting for Fabio Paratici’s confirmation as Fiorentina’s new sporting director despite reporting that the deal’s pretty much done, with his contract at Tottenham Hotspur being the only remaining holdup. The question is if he’ll get his stuff moved into the RBCVPFPWCKGAWTLTDOSGT before the January transfer window opens (unlikely), but everyone agrees that he’ll run the mercato.

And it’s shaping up to be a very busy mercato. It seems like half the squad might leave next month. Gino Infantino’s gone and Amir Richardson might as well be, but Hans Nicolussi Caviglia, Mattia Viti, Pablo Marí, Edin Džeko, and Tommaso Martinelli (on loan) are also on the outs and we could see several other guys leave too. It’s a lot for a new DS to get to grips with but the reporting claims that Paratici will have carte blanche.

At that last point, my ears pricked up. This might be the sort of irresponsible projecting that I usually despise but there are enough things lining up here to get the full Brian Windhorst treatment. My current harebrained theory is that Paratici’s arrival heralds Commisso selling Fiorentina. To be clear, there’s no hard reporting on this and the Viola brass has flatly denied any such rumor, so this is all conjecture. I’m bolding those phrases for emphasis and repeat: this is a harebrained theory from the man who brought you Ondrej Duda. I am a moron with no real information and you can and should remember that. But…

Rocco Commisso is a billionaire. A feature of billionaires is that they are more interested in money than just about anything else. They’re good at making it and better at keeping it. Their minds work terms of a ledger. Commisso’s absence for the past couple seasons clearly indicates that he’s not all that interested in Fiorentina anymore. He hasn’t been to Florence in well over a year and has barely spoken to the press. Gone is the brash, volcanic presence of his first 4ish years in charge, replaced by an absentee owner who can’t be bothered to participate.

The death of Joe Barone is a big reason why. Barone enjoyed Commisso’s complete trust in all things Viola, running the club as he saw fit and ensuring that it remained profitable. After Barone’s tragic demise, Daniele Pradè took over. We all know how that ended and now Ferrari’s the last man standing. While he’s been part of the project for several years, he’s not particularly soccer literate—he was a grocery store executive before ascending to his current position—and, more importantly, hasn’t been part of the brain trust since the beginning. Giuseppe Commisso, Rocco’s son, looks a natural heir for a leadership role as a member of the board of directors but has never been involved behind the scenes.

Commisso, then, has no personal reason for keeping Fiorentina and, as a billionaire, every financial reason for selling it. He’s publicly put the club up for sale before, although that was probably more grandstanding than anything else. His valuation in 2021 was €335 million, and that was before the RBCVPFPWCKGAWTLTDOSGT was completed, likely adding at least €100 million to his valuation. With inflation being what it is, my guess is that he’s asking for at least half a billion to sell.

That’s a steep price but not an outrageous one. Fiorentina is a historic club with a recent record of moderate success. Unlike most teams of similar stature, it’s the only club in its city and, because Florence is a tourism hub, offers tremendous growth potential on the international stage. Too, Tuscany’s liberal politics mean that foreign ownership might be more acceptable to the locals, who comprise a loyal and patient supporter base. Throw in Italy’s finest training facility and you’ve got a sleeping giant.

The complication, of course, is that, for a multitude of reasons, Fiorentina is cheeks. Even if Commisso wanted to sell, nobody would meet his valuation for a club that will have to defeat historical precedent to avoid relegation after an almost hilariously bad start to the campaign. The Viola, in case you’ve forgotten, have won a single league game this year and are nailed to the bottom of the table.

That’s the rub. Nobody’s paying half a billion for a Serie B team. If Commisso wants to get out of the Fiorentina business, he needs the team to stay up. That means shelling out next month to stay in the top flight if Commisso is indeed looking to sell because, as we all know, scared money don’t make none.

And that’s where Paratici comes in. As one of calcio’s most-connected people, he’s got contacts the world over. Going back to his time at Juventus under Beppe Marotta to his current position at Spurs, he’s viewed as the consummate uomo di calcio. His position means that he hasn’t just dealt with players and agents but also with ownership groups.

Here’s where my line of conjecture begins. Paratici has just finished serving an 18-month suspension for his involvement in Plusvalenza scandal and resumed his duties at White Hart Lane. Spurs are struggling in the Premier League but are comfortably mid-table and won’t be going down. Add to that the prestige and money the Premier League offers and it’s fair to wonder why a big name DS would leave to take over at a club that’s struggling as much as Fiorentina.

The answer, I think, lies in Paratici’s 18-month layoff. While he was relieved of official duties and forbidden from working in any official capacity in soccer, I simply cannot believe that he dropped off the map. He was doubtless active behind the scenes, strengthening old relationships and creating new ones. I speculate that he encountered someone who’s looking to buy a club in that stretch and reached an agreement to work with them.

Who that someone is doesn’t matter in this narrative. What does matter is that they’ve contacted Commisso with an offer to buy Fiorentina, an offer predicated on the club staying in Serie A. Paratici’s job, then, isn’t just keeping Fiorentina up for the sake of keeping Fiorentina up. It’s keeping Fiorentina up to ensure some subsequent smooth saling. My theory is that any sale is conditional on the Viola avoiding relegation, which has given Commisso motive to hand things over to Paratici, the prospective owner’s chosen figurehead.

There are clues scattered throughout the coverage. The first is that Ferrari will serve as the middleman between Commisso and Paratici. Normally, I’d expect the owner to be in direct conversation with the high profile mid-season hire at DS. This could just be another piece of Commisso’s ebbing involvement in the club, of course, but it also makes sense if Paratici isn’t so much his employee as he is the tip of the new ownership group’s spear.

Despite some early reporting to the contrary, the belief is now that Paratici doesn’t have an escape clause in his contract in case of relegation. Again, by itself, this doesn’t prove anything. I doubt someone of his stature has any interest in laboring to bring a side back from the second tier, even a side as storied as the Viola. The exclusion of a relegation clause might be so much smoke (what’s reported in a contract and what’s agreed on between the parties involved can differ tremendously) but could also indicate that Paratici’s less a short-term reaction and more of a long-term fixture.

For Commisso, that would be a major departure. This is a man who’s refused to bring anyone new into his inner circle since taking over the club. An emergency like this one would have seen him circle the wagons in years past rather than put his trust in an outsider, even one as well-known as Paratici.

Finally, there’s Paratici’s reputation for under-the-table negotiations. Besides the well-publicized Plusvalenza scandal, which required a network financial secrecy that would line up with a super secret sale, he’s been involved in some other sketchy moments. The first is when Torino owner Urbano Cairo tried to hire him away from Sampdoria in 2008 despite Paratici having a contract with the Blucerchiati for another year; he ended up staying but the Ligurians were not happy about the matter. They were even more displeased a couple years later, when Marotta left Samp for Juventus; Paratici supposedly had an agreement in place to succeed his mentor as DS but instead followed him to Turin, much to Riccardo Garrone’s displeasure.

Again, this whole thing is complete conjecture. Like everyone else, I’m depressed about Fiorentina and am prone to flights of imagination in order to escape the accursed reality in which I find myself trapped. If the Viola weren’t last place and verging on historically pathetic, I’d have the willpower to investigate my own pareidolia and root it out.

As it happens, though, that willpower has been sapped from me. I’m seeing faces in clouds. I want to believe. And, as far as conspiracy theories go, this one isn’t as farfetched as some. It doesn’t require any leaps of imagination, just a willingness to read between lines that might not even be there.