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I-Florence by Dotflorence staff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione-Non opere derivate 2.5 Italia License.
Based on a work at www.i-florence.com
Posts Tagged ‘fiorentina’
ACF Fiorentina – Cap 4 – From 2000 to today
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 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 club’s cause further endeared him to the fans. 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. However, due to the bizarre Caso Catania (Catania Case) the club skipped Serie C1 and was admitted into Serie B, something that was only made possible by the Italian Football Federation‘s decision to resolve the Catania situation by increasing the number of teams in Serie B from 20 to 24 and promoting
Fiorentina for “sports merits”. 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’s unusual double promotion was controversial, with some suggesting that Fiorentina did not deserve it. However, the club remained in Serie B and managed to finish the 2003-04 season in sixth place. This put the Viola in a two-legged playoff against Perugia (the 15th-place finisher in Serie A) for a top-flight place during the next season. Fiorentina completed their remarkable comeback by winning the match 2–1 on aggregate, with both goals scored by Enrico Fantini, to gain promotion back to Serie A. » Read more…
ACF Fiorentina – Cap 2 – The First Scudetto and 50s-60s-70s
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. 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, when a disputed penalty led to a 2-0 defeat at the hands of by Alfredo di Stéfano’s Real Madrid. 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 against Rangers.
After several years of runner-up finishes, Fiorentina dropped away slightly in the 1960s, bouncing from 4th to 6th 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. The 1968-69 season started with Milan as frontrunners, but on match day 7 they lost to Bologna and were overtaken by Gigi Riva’s Cagliari Calcio. » Read more…