Luka Jović calling Fiorentina a stepping stone is not the smartest decision

Despite my various Viola-tinted biases as a Fiorentina fan, there are some realities I can accept. One of these is the fact that no, Fiorentina is no longer one of the top clubs in the world. A combination of the city being unwilling to consider a new stadium and unambitious ownership have sunk the club to being a mid-table Serie A side over the half-decade. While I believe with the right ownership Fiorentina can return to the Champions League and be a major player in the European transfer market, now is not that time. When any club in the Premier League can both outbid and offer more wages to any of our targets, it’s foolish to consider our club anything more than a stepping stone for Europe’s elite.

With that being said, you don’t need to come out and say that. Especially if you’re a certain Serbian striker who’s played like dog water for the majority of the season. Yet, our very own Luka Jović uttered just these things yesterday to Serbian outlet ATV in an interview that was released today. A disclaimer: I don’t know Serbian, and as a result cannot 100% validate the exact translation of Jović’s words to Italian, which I am more comfortable with. However, given that ATV is re-tweeting Violanews’ quotes about this story, it’s safe to assume they’re accurate.

“Squads bigger than Fiorentina wanted me, but I still decided to come here anyways. Everyone knows that financially, I gave up a lot. I have done it because I think it [Fiorentina] is a good springboard to return to my old fitness and to a great club.”

Like I said, even if we all kind of knew this, there’s no need to say it. As someone who has found Jović’s recent celebrations entitled and bratty, this only confirms what I and many others have been worried about. Jović’s mentality does not seem to be in the right place, which should be focused on helping the Viola win. He’s very lucky Vincenzo Italiano has been giving him chance after chance in the starting 11 despite consistently dropping 2/10 performances. And no, scoring against a side that looked closer to Serie C than Serie A quality in Hearts will not change that fact. Quite frankly, with what I’ve seen from Jović thus far, he’s likelier to move to Nottingham Forest as his next club than Chelsea or Inter or whoever he believes is a “big” club.

There are several players such as Franck Ribery, Bartłomiej Drągowski, or currently Szymon Żurkowski, who have been shafted by the club in an unprofessional manner by our ownership in recent years. Never once, however, have you heard these players complain publicly or disrespect the club, because they are professionals and know that the best way to deal with conflict is internally. For a player who is receiving too much of the benefit of the doubt to disrespect the club like this is enough for me to want him gone at the end of the season unless he starts scoring at a Dušan Vlahović rate. I’ve wanted Artur Cabral to get a fair shot in the starting XI for some time now, and these quotes from Jović only make me want that more.

We’ll see how the Curva reacts to these quotes, and if they’ll still be as generous to Jović as they have been all season. If that relationship does change for the worse, however, Jović has no one to blame but himself.