After more than a week’s worth of idiocy as Serie A was unable to figure out what would happen following the postponement and/or forfeiture of Udinese as well as another day’s delay before taking on Torino, Fiorentina finally took the field in 2022 for the first time with a chance to shoot up the standings due to their two games in hand.
Vincenzo Italiano fielded close to his strongest XI, although new signing Jonathan Ikone was only on the bench, while Krzysztof Piątek didn’t make the squad. The visitors emerged looking rusty, as you’d expect, but that rust never shook off. Torino opened the scoring with via Wilfried Singo’s free header at the back post, then added another moments later from Josip Brekalo after some woeful defending. The Croatian completed his brace after José Callejón played the worst backpass you’ll ever see to put him through on goal. The Viola, for their part, never even considered threatening Serie A debutant Luca Gemello’s goal.
The second half wasn’t much better as another extraordinarily poor bit of defending allowed Antonio Sanabria to add a fourth. Fiorentina were obviously punch drunk at this point and wanted nothing more than to get out of the game; they mounted nothing approximating a comeback. The only highlight for fans was a debut for Ikone off the bench, but it’s safe to say that this was the worst team performance we’ve seen since Vincenzo Montella’s star-crossed return to Florence.
If you want to relive this abomination, well, here’s all our coverage. Sicko.