ACF FIORENTINA, OVERCOMING ADVERSITIES SINCE 1926

ACF Fiorentina

Today, The Grandma and her friends have gone to Stadio Artemio Franchi in Firenze to watch a beautiful match between the local team ACF Fiorentina and Frosinone Calcio. Viola has lost this match (0-1 Daniel Ciofani 84'). The match has been very intensive and any of both teams could have won it but Daniel Ciofani has scored an important goal to win.

The Grandma is a great fan of football and she likes ACF Fiorentina, one of the most prestigious teams of Calcio, the Italian Football League. The Grandma remembers great players who played in Fiore, especially the Portuguese Rui Costa, the Argentinian Gabriel Batistuta, the Italian Luca Toni and the Egyptian Mohamed Salah.

Before going to Stadio Artemio Franchi, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 8).

More information: Living Space

ACF Fiorentina, commonly referred to as Fiorentina, is an Italian professional football club based in Florence, Tuscany. Founded by a merger in August 1926, and refounded in August 2002 following bankruptcy, Fiorentina have played at the top level of Italian football for the majority of their existence; only four clubs have played in more Serie A seasons.

Fiorentina has won two Italian Championships, in 1955–56 and again in 1968–69, as well as six Coppa Italia trophies and one Supercoppa Italiana. On the European stage, Fiorentina won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1960–61 and lost the final one year later. They finished runners-up in the 1956–57 European Cup, and also came close to winning the 1989–90 UEFA Cup.

The Grandma & Claire in Stadio Artemio Franchi

Fiorentina is one of the fourteen European teams that played the finals in all three major continental competitions: the Champions League, 1956–1957, the first Italian team to reach the final in the top continental competition, the UEFA Cup Winners (1960–1961 and 1961–1962) and the UEFA Cup (1989–1990).

Since 1931, the club have played at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, which currently has a capacity of 43,147. The stadium has used several names over the years and has undergone several renovations. Fiorentina are known widely by the nickname Viola, a reference to their distinctive purple colours.

ACF Fiorentina was founded in the autumn of 1926 by local noble and National Fascist Party member Luigi Ridolfi, who initiated the merger of two older Florentine clubs, CS Firenze and PG Libertas. The aim of the merger was to give Florence a strong club to rival those of the more dominant Italian Football Championship sides of the time from Northwest Italy. Also influential was the cultural revival and rediscovery of Calcio Fiorentino, an ancestor of modern football that was played by members of the Medici family.

More information: Viola Channel

After a rough start and three seasons in lower leagues, Fiorentina reached the Serie A in 1931. That same year saw the opening of the new stadium, originally named after Giovanni Berta, a prominent fascist, but now known as Stadio Artemio Franchi. At the time, the stadium was a masterpiece of engineering, and its inauguration was monumental. To be able to compete with the best teams in Italy, Fiorentina strengthened their team with some new players, notably the Uruguayan Pedro Petrone, nicknamed el Artillero. Despite enjoying a good season and finishing in fourth place, Fiorentina were relegated the following year, although they would return quickly to Serie A.

In 1941, they won their first Coppa Italia, but the team were unable to build on their success during the 1940s because of World War II and other troubles.

In 1950, Fiorentina started to achieve consistent top-five finishes in the domestic league. The team consisted of great players such as well-known goalkeeper Giuliano Sarti, Sergio Cervato, Francesco Rosella, Guido Gratton, Giuseppe Chiappella and Aldo Scaramucci but above all, the attacking duo of Brazilian Julinho and Argentinian Miguel Montuori. This team won Fiorentina's first scudetto, Italian championship in 1955–56, 12 points ahead of second-place Milan.

Associazione Calcio Fiorentina (1964-1965)

Milan beat Fiorentina to top spot the following year, but more significantly Fiorentina became the first Italian team to play in a European Cup final.

Fiorentina were runners-up again in the three subsequent seasons. In the 1960–61 season, the club won the Coppa Italia again and was also successful in Europe, winning the first Cup Winners' Cup. After several years of runner-up finishes, Fiorentina dropped away slightly in the 1960s, bouncing from fourth to sixth place, although the club won the Coppa Italia and the Mitropa Cup in 1966.

While the 1960s did result in some trophies and good Serie A finishes for Fiorentina, nobody believed that the club could challenge for the title.

Viola players began the 1970s decade with Scudetto sewed on their breast, but the period was not especially fruitful for the team. After a fifth-place finish in 1971, they finished in mid-table almost every year, even flirting with relegation in 1972 and 1978.

The Viola did win the Anglo-Italian League Cup in 1974 and won the Coppa Italia again in 1975. The team consisted of young talents like Vincenzo Guerini and Moreno Roggi, who had the misfortune to suffer bad injuries, and above all Giancarlo Antognoni, who would later become an idol to Fiorentina's fans. The young average age of the players led to the team being called Fiorentina Ye-Ye.

More information: Fiorentina Store

In 1980, Fiorentina was bought by Flavio Pontello, who came from a rich house-building family. He quickly changed the team's anthem and logo, leading to some complaints by the fans, but he started to bring in high-quality players.

The following years were strange for Fiorentina, who vacillated between high finishes and relegation battles. Fiorentina also bought two interesting players, Ramón Díaz and, most significantly, the young Roberto Baggio.

Roberto Mancini & Roberto Baggio

In 1990, Fiorentina fought to avoid relegation right up until the final day of the season, but did reach the UEFA Cup final, where they again faced Juventus. The Turin team won the trophy and emerging star Roberto Baggio was sold to the rival team on the day of the final. 

Pontello, suffering from economic difficulties, was selling all the players and was forced to leave the club after serious riots in Florence's streets. The club was then acquired by the famous filmmaker Mario Cecchi Gori.

The first season under Cecchi Gori's ownership was one of stabilisation, after which the new chairman started to sign some good players like Brian Laudrup, Stefan Effenberg, Francesco Baiano and, most importantly, Gabriel Batistuta, who became an iconic player for the team during the 1990s. In 1993, however, Cecchi Gori died and was succeeded as chairman by his son, Vittorio.

Claudio Ranieri was brought in as coach for the 1993–94 season, and that year, Fiorentina dominated Serie B, Italy's second division. Upon their return to Serie A, Ranieri put together a good team centred around new top scorer Batistuta, signing the young talent Rui Costa from Benfica and the new world champion Brazilian defender Márcio Santos. The former became an idol to Fiorentina fans, while the second disappointed and was sold after only a season. The Viola finished the season in tenth place.

More information: Planet Football

The following season, the club again proved its mettle in cup competitions, winning the Coppa Italia against Atalanta and finishing joint-third in Serie A. In the summer, Fiorentina became the first non-national champions to win the Supercoppa Italiana, defeating Milan 2–1 at the San Siro.

Fiorentina's 1995–96 season was disappointing in the league, but they did reach the Cup Winners' Cup semi-final by beating Gloria Bistrița, Sparta Prague and Benfica. The team lost the semi-final to the eventual winner of the competition, Barcelona (away 1–1; home 0–2).

At the end of the season, Ranieri left Fiorentina and was succeeded by Giovanni Trapattoni. With Trapattoni's expert guidance and Batistuta's goals, Fiorentina challenged for the title in 1998–99 but finished the season in third.

Rui Costa & Gabriel Batistuta

At the end of the season, Trapattoni left the club and was replaced by Turkish coach Fatih Terim. More significantly, however, Batistuta was sold to Roma, who eventually won the title the following year.  

Fiorentina played well in 2000–01 and stayed in the top half of Serie A, despite the resignation of Terim and the arrival of Roberto Mancini. They also won the Coppa Italia for the sixth and last time.

The year 2001 heralded major changes for Fiorentina, as the terrible state of the club's finances was revealed: they were unable to pay wages and had debts of around US$50 million. The club's owner, Vittorio Cecchi Gori, was able to raise some more money, but even this soon proved to be insufficient resources to sustain the club.

Fiorentina were relegated at the end of the 2001–02 season and went into judicially-controlled administration in June 2002. This form of bankruptcy, sports companies cannot exactly fail in this way in Italy, but they can suffer a similar procedure, meant that the club was refused a place in Serie B for the 2002–03 season, and as a result effectively ceased to exist.

The club was promptly re-established in August 2002 as Associazione Calcio Fiorentina e Florentia Viola with shoe and leather entrepreneur Diego Della Valle as new owner and the club was admitted into Serie C2, the fourth tier of Italian football. The only player to remain at the club in its new incarnation was Angelo Di Livio, whose commitment to the club's cause further endeared him to the fans.

More information: These Football Times

Helped by Di Livio and 30-goal striker Christian Riganò, the club won its Serie C2 group with considerable ease, which would normally have led to a promotion to Serie C1.

In the 2003 off-season, the club also bought back the right to use the Fiorentina name and the famous shirt design, and re-incorporated itself as ACF Fiorentina. The club finished the 2003–04 season in sixth place and won the playoff against Perugia to return to top-flight football.

In their first season back in Serie A, however, the club struggled to avoid relegation, only securing survival on the last day of the season on head-to-head record against Bologna and Parma. The club made several signings during the summer transfer market, most notably Luca Toni and Sébastien Frey.

Mohamed Salah & Luca Toni

This drastic move earned them a fourth-place finish with 74 points and a Champions League qualifying round ticket. Toni scored 31 goals in 38 appearances, the first player to pass the 30-goal mark since Antonio Valentin Angelillo in the 1958–59 season, for which he was awarded the European Golden Boot.

On 14 July 2006, however, Fiorentina were relegated to Serie B due to their involvement in the 2006 Serie A match fixing scandal and given a 12-point penalty. The team was reinstated to the Serie A on appeal, but with a 19-point penalty for the 2006–07 season. The team's 2006–07 Champions League place was also revoked. After the start of the season, Fiorentina's penalisation was reduced from 19 points to 15 on appeal to the Italian courts. In spite of this penalty, they managed to secure a place in the UEFA Cup.

Despite Toni's departure to Bayern Munich, Fiorentina had a strong start to the 2007–08 season and were tipped by Italian national team head coach Marcello Lippi, among others, as a surprise challenger for the Scudetto, and although this form tailed off towards the middle of the season, the Viola managed to qualify for the Champions League.

More information: Viola Nation

During this period, on 24 September 2009, Andrea Della Valle resigned from his position as chairman of Fiorentina, and announced all duties would be temporarily transferred to Mario Cognini, Fiorentina's vice-president until a permanent position could be filled.

In June 2010, the Viola bid farewell to long-time manager Cesar Prandelli, by then the longest-serving coach in the team's history, who was departing to coach the Italian national team. Catania manager Siniša Mihajlović was appointed to replace him.

To engineer a resurrection of the club after the disappointing season, the Della Valle family invested heavily in the middle of 2012, buying 17 new players and appointing Vincenzo Montella as head coach.

In 2014–15, during the 2015 winter transfer window, the team club sold star winger Juan Cuadrado to Chelsea for €30 million but were able to secure the loan of Mohamed Salah in exchange, who was a revelation in the second half of the season.

More information: FIFA

It's not important how many mistakes you make; 

it's about how many chances you create 

and how many goals you score. That is my philosophy.

Claudio Ranieri