subject: Fiorentina - The Team Thats Had Its Few Shares Of Ups And Downs [print this page] Fiorentina is a club that plays in Florence and is the one of the main footballing teams in Tuscany who has had their ups and down's over the years. Although for many years they didn't do well in the league they did make a good impression in Europe as they had beaten both English giants Arsenal (1-0) and Manchester United (2-0) in two convincing wins.
But little did people know about the clubs troubles which started with their finances, as they were unable to pay for wages and had large debts in the millions. In 2001 it was only a few years before that they were challenging and making a name for themselves in the Champions league. Although the club's owner Vittorio Cecchi Gori was able to raise some money to keep them fine for a while but in the end it couldn't be sustained and on the field they weren't better so they got relegated and to make things worse they were put into controlled administration in June 2002. This made it that the team was refused entry into Serie B for the next season so they ceased to exist.
Thankfully due to Diego Della Valle, a shoe and leather entrepreneur who has purchased and re-established the team, they have gone into the Serie C2, the fourth tier of the Italian league, instead of the second tier league, which is what they would have competed in that year. It took them four years to get back to the main Italian league.
In 2006, they almost got relegated again, as they were involved in the Serie A match fixing scandal. The Italian match fixing scandal was when teams were caught by the Italian police rigging games. The police had intercepted phone calls that showed relations between teams and referee organisations. The teams that were involved other than Fiorentina were Milan, Lazio, Juventus (who were champions at the time) and Reggina. It was said that Internazionale Milan were involved as well but there hasn't been any proof that they did. They rigged matches by selecting certain referees.
Fiorentina were originally given a 12 point deduction and put into the Serie B for the next season, but after an appeal they were reinstated into the Serie A and were given a 19 point deduction. They also weren't allowed to play in the champions league that year and their president Andrea Della Valle was banned for three years and six months and their honorary president Diego Della Valle was banned for four years.
The team had players that credit Fiorentina as the reason why they became great players. These were players such as Gabriel Batistuta, who was one of the best strikers in the Serie A and was one of Argentinas most important players who was named in the Fifa 100 list of 125 greatest living players. He was a player who stayed with the club when they got relegated in 1993; he became such a cult figure that they erected a statue of him in 1996. There were other players who were highly regarded in the same period, such as Rui Costa, Stefan Schwarz, Luis Oliveira, Edumundo and many others. These are players that would be welcomed in any of the fans Tuscany villas as they are considered talismans of the club and have been with the club through thick and thin.
