BatiGol Weekly 232: Hard luck story

There are few things as confusing as good luck for a team like Fiorentina. After all, this is a club that’s famous for barely missing out: the disputed penalty in the 1957 European Cup final, 3 straight Serie A runner-up campaigns to close out the 1950s, a runner-up in 1982 when Juventus took the Scudetto with a dubious penalty, the 1990 UEFA Cup which saw Roberto Baggio sold to the Juvenuts on the day of the match, the hideously one-sided refereeing in the Champions League tie against Bayern Munich in 2010, the late-season collapse just last year to miss out on the Europa League.

Or, if you prefer, Fiorentina is a team of disasters: relegation from Serie after just their second year in the league, the riots to end the Pontello era in 1990, relegation in 1993, the dissolution of the club in 2002, the relegation to Serie B and subsequent reinstatement to the top flight with a 19-point penalty in 2006, the ceaseless saga of beloved players sold to make ends meet.

That’s why we, as fans, aren’t very good at accepting a fortunate turn of events. We’re eternally waiting for the other shoe to drop. Against Inter Milan on Sunday, for example, Fiorentina got a very late and probably nonexistent penalty at the death to pull back into a draw. We were all stunned. None of us knew how to react.

Some of us celebrated the success and ignored the injustice of it all; after all, gift horses’ mouths and all that. Some of us justified it by reminding everyone about the away leg earlier this year, in which Inter won an equally nonexistent penalty on a handball. Some of us laughed, comparing the relative size and clout of the clubs involved with the joy of the little guy getting one over on the big buy. Some of us defended the result, citing the two questionable refereeing decision that cost Fiorentina in the same half.

I’d like to suggest another option, though. Maybe let’s just accept that the Viola got away with this one, just as they’ve gotten away with other decisions in the past and just as they will be skewered by other decisions in the future. These things cut both ways, and there’s no doubt that we’ll be screaming at our screens again soon enough. Even with VAR, human error is part of the game just as much as an overmatched defender bundling an attacker over in the box or a misfiring striker bottling the simplest of chances. The whole point of soccer is that, while you may try to control all the factors at play, there are always going to be infinitely more things outside your power than within it. At a certain point, you just have to shrug and move on.

Unless, of course, you’re Juventus. In which case you never get hosed by the referee and we all hate you.

Latest news

Luis Muriel and Edimilson Fernandes are likely to see their loan deals redeemed at season’s end, we hear.

It doesn’t happen often, but Serie A did the right thing in moving Fiorentina’s league clash against Atalanta to Sunday after originally scheduling it on Monday, exactly a year after the death of Davide Astori.

Fiorentina hammered SPAL 1-4 behind a controversial penalty. And that was the last time the Viola were involved in a VAR debate this year. Check our full coverage here.

The lads on loan in Serie C look pretty good, actually. Catch up with them.

Gerson is another loanee who could make his stay permanent, if you believe the rumors (we might?).

The Viola played a typically boring and unremarkable match against Inter Milan and now we’re all best friends forever, thanks. On the plus side, we got a very informative conversation in with the brilliant Will Beckman of Serpents of the Madonnina.

It hasn’t been particularly easy for the players on loan outside of Italy, but they’re muddling through as best they can.

Must read

As Fiorentina’s newly devastating tridente begins to coalesce, we still don’t know who the third member is. But yall had some ideas.

Accusing Federico Chiesa of flopping is both unoriginal and downright wrong and it’d be cool if everyone would just knock it off.

We all know who Fiorentina’s most important player is (it’s Chiesa, duh), but you told us who the second most important player on the team is.

Comment of the week

Heskanka had a pretty good time at that match.

That’s it for this week, folks. Don’t bite your nails. Especially not your toenails.