It’s Time to Sack Paulo Sousa

There is something to be said for stability in an organization and team. It is important to build a rapport with players and management of the organization. Sometimes though these things just are not working out. The career of Paulo Sousa as manager in Florence has been a bit of a whirlwind to say the least. His first season at the helm, after taking over for Vincenzo Montella, was fairly successful. Fiorentina was at the top of the Serie A table for the early part of the season, but faltered towards the end. Ultimately, Fiorentina qualified for a Europa League position even after only winning 2 of their last 12 matches. Maybe that should have been a sign for things to come.

Fast forward to 2016, Paulo Sousa is in his second season as manager and has shown a steady decline in production. Calcio (soccer, football whatever you want to call it) is a results based business. If you trend upwards, you will probably keep your job. If you trend downwards, you probably will get fired (unless you have dirt on someone in the organization). This season has been very up and down for Fiorentina and Sousa. Every time the team seems to put together a little run, they also seem to fall apart right after that.

Currently, Fiorentina is looking to be at a real low point this season. With 12 matches left in the season Fiorentina is on the outside looking in. It is easy to say that there is still almost a third of the season left, but they really are not in a good spot. Right now la Viola are placed 8th in Serie A with 41 points. This is 7 points behind getting a chance to play European football next season. Forget about catching league leader Juventus, who currently has 66 points. Fiorentina would have to go on a run of biblical proportions to catch up and Juventus would have to lose a lot of their matches too. So would most of the other teams in front of Fiorentina on the table.

So now that we established that the season is an uphill climb at best the rest of the way. Here are the real reasons why Sousa should be shown the door. There is no need to really get into every single decision he makes as a manager. Being a human he will make good subs at good points and he will make terrible decisions at other points. The fact of the matter is the team cannot close out matches right now. Just look at the debacle in the Europa league against Borussia Mönchengladbach. The first match was won away by a score of 1-0. Then Fiorentina was leading the second match 2-0 in the first half. That gave la Viola a 3-0 lead on aggregate. Well as they say, the rest is history, Borussia Mönchengladbach scored 4 goals to not only win that game, but advance in the Europa league. How does that happen? Sousa should have been sacked right away after that game. It was an absolute embarrassment.

Not only was that lead squandered but the most recent match against Torino was squandered as well. Fiorentina also was leading that match 2-0 and gave up 2 goals in the second half to tie. Clearly the team is having trouble finishing matches. This should cause some concern around the Florence faithful. The message is not being brought to the team and Sousa probably should not get a chance to right the ship.