11 reasons to be thankful you’re a Fiorentina fan

This seems like as good a day as any to give thanks to whatever higher power (and no Adrian Mutu jokes, dang it) that we’re Fiorentina fans. After dropping 5 points to teams in danger of relegation these past few weeks, it can be a little bit more difficult to recall, but here’s why we’re grateful to be Viola fans and wouldn’t trade it for anything else.

1. Florence is the best city in the world. Other people might think otherwise, and they are welcome to their incorrect opinions. Florence is better.

2. Nobody’s colors are as iconic and lovely. Pretty much every team in the world wears some combination of black, white, red, or blue. Every single one of those teams has a kit twin somewhere, like Newcastle of Newcastle and Newcastle of Turin. Even those few teams who wear something different go for something a bit eye-jarring—we’re looking at you, Norwich City and St. Pauli.

3. Gabriel Omar Batistuta.

4. The Viola are the 7th-most successful club in Italy. Being in the top 0.25% of the 261 professional clubs on the peninsula is objectively awesome. And that doesn’t even factor in the countless semi-professional, amateur, and defunct outfits.

5. 4-2.

6. Suor Daniela. Name me another club that has a nun in full habit attend home matches. Go on. I’ll wait.

7. There are a lot of really talented young players on the books right now. Federico Chiesa. Gil Dias. Giovanni Simeone. Simone Lo Faso. Ianis Hagi. Rafik Zekhnini. Abdou Diakhate. Nikola Milenković. Andy Bangu. Gaetano Castrovilli. Bartłomiej Drągowski. Martin Graiciar. Kevin Diks. Simone Minelli. Jan Mlakar. Joshua Pérez. Petko Hristov. Michele Cerofolini. Ricardo Sottil. Gabriele Gori. Marco Melli. Vitja Valenčič. Julián Illanes.

8. The knowledge that the Gigliati beat Bayern Munich in the Champions League in 2010. All the crooked refereeing in the world can’t take away the fact that Fiorentina were the better side across two legs.

9. The list of distinguished alumni. Kurt Hamrin. Miguel Montuori. Amarildo. Julinho. Giancarlo Antognoni. Daniel Passarella. Roberto Baggio. Rui Costa. Batistuta. Enrico Chiesa. Angelo di Livio. Dunga. Luca Toni. Sébastien Frey. Adi Mutu. Stevan Jovetić. Giuseppe Rossi. Borja Valero. Gonzalo Rodríguez. Guys who were world-class and loved the shirt, and any club would be proud to count them among the ranks.

10. Fiorentina Women’s. They’re kicking ass at a historic rate in Italy, and they’re doing it in purple shirts.

11. Everyone on this blog. Being a fan would suck a whole lot more without the community here. Thank you, everybody, for making losses to Crotone tolerable. I wouldn’t trade yall for the world.