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Fiorentina’s 100th birthday party had been going for four days, starting with a fan procession through the historic centre of Florence on Wednesday night and extending to their home game against Frosinone on Saturday afternoon. The club was founded on 29 August 1926, but a decades-old discrepancy in the reporting of that date has led supporters to celebrate traditionally on the 26th.
This time they started a few hours earlier, gathering in their thousands beneath the marble façade of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella on the evening of 25 August and building to a firework show beside the river Arno at midnight. The club’s president, Giuseppe Commisso, stopped by to give a speech. At least one former player, Borja Valero, was among the crowd.
In the days that followed, historic monuments across the city were lit up in purple to match Fiorentina’s home strip. They have worn that colour since 1929, having played their first three years in shirts half red and half white. A limited-edition replica of those original tops, priced at €180, sold out in less than two hours.
Fiorentina’s players would wear them against Frosinone. Before kick-off, the club hosted some of their greatest former players and coaches for a lunch at their headquarters in Viola Park. The likes of Gabriel Batistuta, Rui Costa, Adrien Mutu and Cesare Prandelli gathered to eat and then head to the stadium, where they were greeted with a party atmosphere.
Not every preparation had gone to plan. Fiorentina had intended for renovations to their Stadio Artemio Franchi to be completed in time for this occasion, but delays meant the Curva Fiesole – the stand traditionally occupied by ultras – remains closed. Still, those same groups arranged a striking choreography at the opposite end instead, recreating the original club badge against a sea of purple flags.
Spirits were high. Despite an opening 4-0 drubbing by Roma, Fiorentina’s supporters had reasons to believe their team was on a good track. They had spent more than €120m on refreshing their squad with exciting young talent, including the Ivory Coast midfielder Christ Inao Oulaï and highly-rated teenage defender Víctor Valdepeñas from Real Madrid Castilla, as well as Arthur Atta and Mateo Pellegrino, coming off breakout seasons with Udinese and Parma.
And that’s not to mention the players they landed on loan. Real Madrid paid €45m to sign the Argentinian winger Franco Mastantuono from River Plate last August and now the 19-year-old would be lining up in Fiorentina’s attack. Radu Dragusin and Álex Jiménez brought Premier League experience from Tottenham and Bournemouth.
The new manager, Fabio Grosso, would need time to blend this group together. But a home game against newly-promoted Frosinone seemed a perfect opportunity for new faces to establish themselves while marking the club’s centenary in style.
It did not work out that way.
Fiorentina started well enough. After a clumsy first few minutes they began to dictate, Mastantuono on the right taking turns with Albert Gudmundsson on the left at getting behind the defence. Jiménez supported ably with overlapping runs from full-back. It felt like a matter of time before they scored.
But a warning arrived in the 25th minute, when Frosinone launched a counter from a Fiorentina free-kick. They reached the penalty area with a numbers advantage, three on two, but Seydou Fini dallied and got dispossessed as he checked back.
Frosinone’s centre-forward, Antonio Raimondo, roared in frustration. A minute later, he opened the scoring. This time Giorgi Kvernadze drove to the goal-line down the left, barely keeping the ball in, before cutting it back for Raimondo to force home at the near post.
Fiorentina responded well. Atta forced a save from Lorenzo Palmisani, before Mastantuono and Valdepeñas smacked shots against the left post. There were moments of quality. Mastantuono did outrageously well to salvage a ball played behind him, controlling with one heel, then knocking the ball across his defender with the second. The stadium appealed for a penalty as he went to ground under contact from Gabriele Bracaglia, but Mastantuono bounced back to his feet and nutmegged another opponent as he shot against the far upright.
Narrow margins. Instead of pulling level, Fiorentina fell further behind in the 38th minute when Bracaglia headed home from a corner. Now the wind truly came out of their sails. Despite a series of substitutions, Grosso’s team offered no hint of a comeback. Raimondo made it 3-0 to Frosinone in the 68th minute with a glorious chest-down and outside-of-the-boot finish.
An astonishing scoreline. Frosinone only narrowly avoided relegation to Italy’s third tier in 2025, when they were set to contest a play-out with Salernitana before a points deduction for Brescia bumped them up the Serie B standings. La Gazzetta dello Sport predicted them to struggle again last season, but their manager, Massimiliano Alvini used the pink paper as motivation, showing it off to players at the start of what became an unexpected run to promotion.
There is much more to say about Frosinone, and Alvini, whose only previous experience in Serie A was a winless 18-game stretch with Cremonese four years ago. An unassuming character, who even now maintains an active LinkedIn page but who has earned his place after finding continuous work as a manager – albeit mostly in the lower divisions – for a quarter of a century.
It is hard to move past Fiorentina as the story, however, on the weekend that they marked their centenary by making their worst-ever start to a Serie A season. They have lost their first two games now by a combined seven goals. It is the first time they have begun a top-flight campaign being shut out in back-to-back defeats.
Serie A results
ShowMilan 2-0 Venezia, Sassuolo 2-1 Torino, Monza 2-3 Udinese, Fiorentina 0-3 Frosinone, Juventus 2-0 Parma, Napoli 1-2 Como, Lazio 1-0 Genoa, Cagliari 0-1 Inter
Perhaps this will all prove an aberration. We are still a way off yet from the horrors of last season, when Fiorentina took six points from their opening 15 matches, winning none. But this was certainly not the night Giuseppe Commisso wanted. His father, Rocco, had sought to transform Fiorentina after taking the club over in 2019, investing heavily to create what has been billed as Italy’s biggest sports centre at Viola Park, with upgraded training facilities for Fiorentina’s men’s and women’s teams, as well as their academy.
Since Rocco passed away in January, Giuseppe has spoken of wanting to carry forward his father’s legacy. “Our family’s total financial commitment to Fiorentina is €1.1bn,” he said on Saturday. “This summer Fiorentina made the largest single transfer window investment in new players in the history of the club.”
He was speaking from the pitch, part of a post-game show to mark the centenary. An event that could not escape the shadow of the 90 minutes that preceded it. Many fans did stay to applaud Batistuta, Rui Costa and other club legends who came out for reintroductions and reminiscences. But the current team were drowned in whistles.
“Today, on Fiorentina’s 100th anniversary, I am not declaring that we have arrived, I am declaring that we have begun again,” said Commisso, swapping between English and Italian. “From this fresh start, Fiorentina’s Renaissance will commence.”
All words that fans love to hear. And all a little harder to buy into, in the aftermath of yet another chastening setback.
