BatiGol Weekly 72: Favorite thing

Yeah, I know I feel this way, but I ain’t gonna never change.Everyone here is going to agree that Fiorentina is the best club in the world; if you think otherwise, perhaps you should find another blog to read and comment on. After all, Fiorentina has everything you could want in a club: The history of rare successes, somewhat more frequent near-misses, and the occasional ignominious reversal of fortune. Some all-time great players. A widely praised style and identity. One of the smartest fanbases around (hey, that’s us). The coolest shirts in the business. Yeah, Fiorentina is superior to all other teams in terms of overall coolness.

This is what makes it so hard to accept the fact that the Viola don’t win a lot of trophies. That their best players will usually leave for richer teams. That there are going to be a lot of frustrating losses to minnows. Anything and everything involving Juventus.

But common sense tells us that we have to look at the big picture. Fiorentina lurks somewhere in Serie A’s upper-middle class in terms of finances, and that’s generally the best indicator of how a side will perform. A rational look at things will clearly explain that a 4th- or 5th- or 6th-place finish is about what we should expect from this club, and that expecting anything else falls into that weird entitlement that all fans get about their teams.

But the hell with that. This is Fiorentina, and as fans, we are entitled to wonderful football that gets results. This is the team of Gabriel Batistuta, Rui Costa, Luca Toni, Adrian Mutu, Alberto Gilardino, Stevan Jovetic, and Giuseppe Rossi, so goals are something we should expect. This is the team that has failed in both domestic and international competitions more than it’s succeeded, sure, but it has failed gloriously and beautifully and romantically and that’s a big part of why we love it.

So next time your friend or coworker or subconscious tells you to stop bleeding purple for a team that’ll never Do It, remember that you don’t have to explain why this team deserves to win stuff. Because if someone can’t figure it out, well, they’re probably beyond helping anyways.

Latest news

The Viola rolled right over last-place Palermo and we never had any doubt that it would end up that way at all and you can read our match coverage to prove it.

We thought we knew what was up with Mauro Zarate’s conspicuous absence from the Fiorentina set-up, but his brief cameo against the Pinkies may make us rethink it all again.

We may be looking at the beginning of yet another saga involving a beloved Viola captain being shown the door, as contract talks with Gonzalo Rodriguez are not going well.

Must read

Here’s your opportunity to catch up on all of last week’s hottest transfer rumors, which everyone has pretty much completely forgotten already.

If you’ve been wondering what the loanees in the Lega Pro and Serie D are up to, your Fiorentina priorities are very strange. But we’ve got the report for you nonetheless.

The Chapocoense tragedy has everyone thinking really hard about what’s really important, and Nolan’s done a really powerful job of putting it all into words.

Comment of the week

We haven’t heard much from him recently because he’s been managing a professional team in Brazil, but long-time friend of the blog davih explains the unexpected beauty of Chapocoense.

That’s it for this week, folks. Don’t forget the Europa League fixture against Qarabag on Thursday. And don’t forget that we’re all pretty fragile, so let’s take care of each other.