It’s been an interesting week as Fiorentina continues to prepare for its Champions League Qualifier next week vs. Slavia Prague. They have signed a new player, revisited the contract of an old hand, and played another friendly, looking pretty good in the process.
First off, the Viola played the Romanian club Progresul in a friendly, winning the match 3-1. Kuzmanovic, Gila, and Pazzini (who has been a beast in the pre-season) all scored, while Melo, Santana, and Gila (again) almost scored, so it sounds like one of those matches that could have been 4 or 5 to 1. My usual caveat is appropriate here: pre-season friendlies don’t really mean much, but it is good to see the team playing well together.
In other news, the Viola signed midfielder Sergio Almiron from Juve, a bit of information seemingly first reported in the comment section of this blog. (Nice work as always, fellas!) The great man and the front office are obviously building up the squad to play on multiple fronts this year, and I like it, although I would still like to see one or two more reinforcements in the back. But in Prands I trust…
Another bit of news reported here a few days ago is that Adrian Mutu has definitely, honest-to-goodness signed a contract extension. Looks like we can count on the little squirt being with us for another year, something I for one am defiantly happy about. It seems the club convinced him to stay with a measly raise of 180,000 euros per year, which is big moohlah for us regular folk but chump change in the world of European Football. Good business by the bosses of Fiorentina, I think.
Finally, speaking of the rich, I have an eBay auction to point to any well-heeled readers of this blog. It seems that when Fiorentina played Barca in that friendly in Florence a few weeks back they got autographed shirts by both teams that they could sell at auction for charity. Each is sold separately, and the best thing about them is that it is probably as close as one will ever get to knowing you have a genuine autographed team shirt without getting it signed in person, since the shirts are being sold by the team, right after the match, for charity. In the world of the internet, where almost every autograph is a fake, it is rare to get a chance to get something genuine. Still a ton of dough, though. If anyone wants to buy the Viola shirt and send it my way, it would be much appreciated. The link can be found here.
That’s all for now. Hope you are all doing well and getting excited for Champions League.