Firing Paolo Vanoli is the peak of idiocy
· Yahoo Sports
Paolo Vanoli has not led Fiorentina to glory since replacing Stefano Pioli. Hell, he hasn’t led Fiorentina to safety; the Viola still languish in 18th place after coughing up a stoppage time equalizer to Torino to snap a 3-game losing streak. All the problems we saw under the Piolus are still glaring right in your face every time you have the misfortune to watch this team. Sure, Vanoli’s overseen a couple of wins—more than Pioli managed—but the team’s still a mess and it’s at least partly on him. And yet firing him would be an enormous mistake. Let’s run down 5 reasons.
1. Stability > chaos
Smart teams are the most boring off the pitch. They present a facade of united serenity at all times. That’s because stable environments generally create the best results. When everyone knows the end point and understands how to get there, they can work together to arrive in the best possible fashion. That requires minimizing distractions so every effort is directed towards a single goal. There’s only so much mental real estate in anyone’s head and ensuring it’s all zoned for team success is critical.
Visit milkshakeslot.online for more information.
Changing out the coach is a major distraction, riling up the press and the fans while destabilizing the players. It’s not just about a new tactical system. It’s about having to build a relationship with a new boss, figuring out what corners you can and can’t cut, what opinions you can offer and how you can offer them. With so many new variables, every action takes a little longer to process. That negatively impacts performance.
Fiorentina’s learned that lesson in the Commisso era: the club’s best 3-year stretch came under Vincenzo Italiano, who provided the squad with continuity and identity that’s otherwise been lacking. Sacking Pioli was necessary after a historically bad start but throwing the club into further disarray by sacking Vanoli and bringing in a new coach wouldn’t help at this point. It took 2 months to get the players out of their Pioli-induced funk. Another 2 months of chaos nearly assures relegation. Vanoli’s not perfect by any stretch but he’s the only option that offers a modicum of stability.
2. Paratici needs a minute
One of the primary reasons behind hiring Fabio Paratici was getting an adult into the room, someone who’s swum in the waters of calcio for long enough that he knows every little current. That’s been an obvious necessity since at least Joe Barone’s passing. While ultimate authority for team decisions needs to rest in one person, that person also needs numerous informed voices before making those decisions.
For the past couple years, Fiorentina hasn’t had that at all. It’s been the Daniele Pradè show and he’s run the club into the ground. Now Paratici’s job is to pick up the pieces. His first order of business ought to be getting to grips with everyone at the club. That goes from the board (Giuseppe Commisso, Alessandro Ferrari, Mark Stephan) through upper management (Roberto Goretti, Lorenzo Giani, Valentino Angeloni, Luca Pengue) down to the day-to-day staff, including the head coach.
Paratici’s been on the job for less than 2 weeks. He’s still getting up to speed. Think of your own job: there’s the org chart, sure, but when you actually need something, you don’t follow that. You go to whoever’s got the mix of authority and experience. That’s what institutional knowledge is all about. It’s how humans operate in complex social situations, both in our quotidian existences and at the highest (okay, maybe not quite) levels of sport. Rushing into a major decision after 13 days is exactly how you end up with a manager who can’t scrounge a single win through the first 10 rounds of the season.
3. Just stop it with de Zerbi
Fiorentina fans have been eying Marseille like a roomful of tigers gazing at an injured warthog. Since L’OM announced its parting from Roberto de Zerbi a couple days ago, the ex-Sassuolo man’s been all over the discourse. Vanoli’s not getting results but more than that, he’s not an acclaimed coach. He’s a journeyman, a jobber, while RdZ’s coached in the Champions League. That has to mean the latter’s an upgrade, full stop.
De Zerbi isn’t a better option, though. For one thing, he’s as explosive as any manager in Europe: red cards, touchline suspensions, and questioning management in the press are regular occurrences with him at the helm. His departure from Marseille was announced at 2:35 AM local time, which is evidence of something odd. Moreover, RdZ’s methods put a lot of stress on his defenders and Fiorentina’s defenders can’t handle more stress. I’m thinking of his Benevento, which finished dead last in 2017-2018 with the worst defensive record of any Serie A team in history at the time because he was asking limited players to do expansive things.
More than that, though, he’s an ideologue, wedded to his style of play because it reflects some larger truth. I find that deeply admirable, as do his peers: his influence is all over the modern game, just like Juanma Lillo or Marcelo Bielsa. As a theorist, he’s helped define this era. As a coach, though, he’s not the type to take over a relegation-threatened side and do the boring stuff to ensure survival. He’s too combustible, both tactically and personally. In June, with time to install his schemes in preseason? Sure. Right now? Nah.
4. In fact, stop it with other managers period
Enzo Maresca’s won the Europa League and the Club World Cup in the past 12 months while leading Chelsea back into the Champions League for the first time in half a decade. His floor is a mid-table Premier League team unless a Saudi or Qatari team backs up the Brinks truck. He’s not swapping Stamford Bridge for the Ponte Vecchio if his reward is maybe, just maybe, avoiding Serie B next year.
Thiago Motta’s the most interesting realistic option but I doubt he’d take the bait. He’s probably Como’s first choice to replace Cesc Fabregas should the Spaniard move this summer. Motta’s profile is too high for a club in 18th. He washed out at Juventus, yeah, but he also showed enough to get the Juve job. A setback doesn’t erase his previous record.
That’s the thing to remember: Fiorentina is a toxic environment. Nobody wants the ignominy of taking a storied club into Serie B. The uncertain ownership situation further destabilizes the immediate future. No proven manager wants a job that could take them to the second tier next year. Any coach who might consider the job—Igor Tudor, Ivan Juric, Walter Mazzarri, Patrick Vieira, Alberto Gilardino, Paolo Zanetti—has plenty of warts. There’s no instant solution. If there were, the club that ends up in this situation every year would push the button and escape every time.
5. Paying 3 coaches is very dumb
Hiring Pioli was an enormous mistake. We all know that now. He never seemed to care all that much about the club, focusing instead on ensuring he and his staff got paid. Fiorentina is, in fact, still covering some or all of his €3+ million annual salary. Staff contracts count toward FSR and paying Pioli and company is essentially like paying for a couple of star players who won’t ever feature.
Paolo Vanoli doesn’t earn nearly as much, taking home about €1 million. Combine that with Pioli’s payout, though, and Vanoli’s own staff, and you’ve got a significant financial outlay on coaches who aren’t at the club. Now imagine sacking Vanoli and paying him and whoever came into replace him as well as Pioli. That’s the kind of shortsightedness that limits options going forward, and Fiorentina isn’t a club that can afford to limit its options going forward.
6. An uncertain future looms
Nobody knows how to fix this Viola mess because it is vast and contains multitudes. Those multitudes, though, can be reduced to a pair of questions. First, will Fiorentina play in Serie A next year? Second, will the Commisso family sell the club? Until at least one of those questions is answered, there aren’t any long-term solutions available that don’t risk a disproportionately negative effect.
Since taking over as chairman, Giuseppe Commisso has squashed every rumor that the family wants to sell. His mother Catherine has echoed that message. Even so, it’s not hard to connect some dots and foresee a sale this summer. Rocco obliquely referenced putting Fiorentina up for sale over the past couple years without receiving an offer that met his valuation of half a billion euros. That’s a steep price for a middling Serie A club, much less one that’s struggling to perform. It’s prohibitive for a Serie B outfit.
Fiorentina probably isn’t financially ready for relegation. The club’s operating costs rely heavily on its share of the Serie A broadcast rights, which come out to about €60 million. Serie B teams receive, on average, about 5% of that in broadcast rights. Even with a €25 million parachute payment, Fiorentina’s looking at a deficit of over €30 million. Especially with the Franchi under construction, limiting match day revenue, Fiorentina would be in deep fiscal trouble even with increased fan support for the centenary.
This is not an environment that encourages spending. It’s why all of Fiorentina’s winter transfers prioritized financial flexibility. In case of relegation or a sale, the club needs its books as clean as possible so the next project can begin from scratch. Vanoli’s contract expires at season’s end but has a club option for another year. That’s valuable for Fiorentina because it provides an escape hatch in case of either sale or relegation. It’s not a fun reason to keep the mister around but it figures into the calculus.
During an emergency, the easiest response is frenzied activity. Sometimes that’s necessary. Often, though, it’s performative. “See, we’re doing everything we can to avert the crisis,” says someone who’s more interested in appearing to act than actually confronting the problem. “I can’t be blamed for lack of effort. I’ve tried everything. In contrast, staying calm and staying the course risks looking unconcerned or apathetic and opens one up to accusations of not trying hard enough to escape the predicament.
It’s just optics. Fans want instant gratification. We live and die with every game. Those running the team have to think of it differently, though, ignoring short-term fixes that lead into dead ends in favor of painful growth. If management isn’t able to frame negative performances as part of a process while pointing to positives that augur future success, fans rebel and things turn ugly.
At this point, the potential drawbacks of sacking Vanoli significantly outweigh the benefits. Unless he goes full Delio Rossi or something, it’s counterproductive to fire him.