Player Focus: Matri Primed to Take His Chance at Fiorentina

As Giuseppe Rossi writhed around in pain following a needless challenge from behind by Leandro Rinaudo during the Tuscan derby between Fiorentina and Livorno at the beginning of the year, you feared for him and his team. He was clutching his right knee, the one that had kept him out for 18 months between winter 2011 and summer 2013 after twice tearing his cruciate ligament, first while playing for Villarreal and then during his rehabilitation ahead of Euro 2012. 

Fiorentina were deeply upset. Co-owner Andrea Della Valle blasted Rinaudo, calling him a “scoundrel.” Their director of sport Daniele Pradè was almost moved to tears while watching the incident back on TV. Everyone, the player included, had thought his injury woes were behind him. Up until Rinaudo’s reckless tackle, Rossi had been Serie A’s Player of the Season. He was Capocannoniere with 14 goals in 18 league appearances, the stand-out moment being a hat-trick against champions Juventus. 

How were Fiorentina going to cope without him? Summer signing Mario Gómez was also out with a knee injury of his own and though expected to make his return before Christmas following the tear he sustained to his medial collateral ligament against Cagliari in mid-September, recurrent pain meant he had yet to start training again and wouldn’t be able to do so until it subsided. 

You sympathised with Fiorentina. When the last transfer window closed, the last thing one presumes they thought they’d be looking for once it opened in January would be another striker.

But that’s where they were. Tough as it may have been to go cap in hand to Milan after they unsettled Adem Ljajic in the summer, a bitter saga that led Fiorentina to declare they’d sell him to anyone but them - their fantasista went to Roma instead - they put their pride to one side and made an inquiry to take Alessandro Matri on loan. It was successful. That Milan were prepared to allow the striker to leave just four months after signing him from Juventus indicated that his return to the club whose academy he’d come through as a youngster hadn’t gone as planned.

Days before he joined, the ultras in San Siro’s Curva Sud unfurled a banner ahead of a Champions League play-off against PSV Eindhoven. It read: ‘Matri, no thanks.’ They felt Milan would be better served “reinforcing the defence and midfield.” His fee was met with consternation too. Milan paid €12m for him. To put that into some kind of perspective, Juventus, the seller, had bought Carlos Tevez, his replacement, for €9m. Given how finite resources are at Milan, supporters understandably believed it could have been spent better. 

Matri also became a stick to beat Massimiliano Allegri with. By asking for and obtaining his former protege at Cagliari from Juventus, the coach revealed himself to have an influence on transfer strategy that he claimed not to have when Andrea Pirlo was let go two years earlier. So a move that was supposed to be a homecoming for Matri turned out to be anything but. He felt unwelcome and played as though he had the world on his shoulders. It showed.

His average rating in La Gazzetta dello Sport was 5.25. On WhoScored it was 6.38. Matri scored only one goal in 939 minutes for Milan. It was worthless too, coming in a 3-2 defeat away to Parma. He was whistled and, to his credit, held his hands up and acknowledged that some of his performances weren’t good enough. “I am very self critical and will say that I only have myself to blame. I didn’t manage to express myself how I wanted.”

Even so, the team as a whole wasn’t producing and it can’t have been easy for Matri to give his best amid such dissent. He lost his place and played only snatches of games as Allegri changed to a Christmas tree formation with Mario Balotelli acting as the lone striker and Kaká and Robinho behind him. Giampaolo Pazzini’s return to fitness also threatened to limit the opportunities he might expect to have in the starting XI. “I can’t be sat on the bench at 29,” Matri explained. Not in a World Cup year. 

So when Fiorentina made their interest known and presented him with an offer, his reply was immediate. Yes. On arriving in Florence to put pen to paper, Matri was given a challenge by Pradè. “Are you ready to score 10 goals in the second half of the season, Alessandro?” He smiled back. “10 isn’t that many.” Sounds bullish for a guy who managed just one in the first half of campaign, doesn’t it? People are quick to forget, however, that Matri has done this before.

He scored nine for Juventus after joining them from Cagliari at the mid-point of the 2010-11 season [totalling 20 as a whole]. He then finished their top scorer with 10 the following year as they won the title for the first time after Calciopoli. They act as reminders that Matri, contrary to the perception developed over the last 18 months or so, is deserving of a higher standing among the strikers operating in Serie A. “A little continuity will be good enough for me [to do well],” he said. 

Matri will get that at Fiorentina. Until Gómez and Rossi return he will be their go-to guy. It helps that he is playing under a coach in Vincenzo Montella who used to be a striker and knows what he’s going through. “He told me just to stay calm, that he had faith in me and that everyone at the club wants me here,” Matri revealed. Take midfield playmaker David Pizarro, for instance. He recognised Matri fulfilled a need for Fiorentina. “We get to the final third and to crossing positions with ease,” he said. “We were missing a penalty box striker.” 

Matri is that someone Fiorentina can play the ball up to. Though their game is based around possession (they average 59.1% of the ball) and short-passing - only Roma tiki-taka it more than they do (489 to 474 per game) - it should be noted that they do like to go long more than any other team apart from Milan (74 to 66 per game). And while Fiorentina don’t cross it as much as the majority of teams in Serie A (21 per game), they have wingers and full-backs capable of supplying regular and quality service. In short, if Matri couldn’t score at Fiorentina, he really had lost his touch. 

And apropos of touches he had just 13 on his debut against Catania, yet did the maximum with the minimum. Twenty five minutes into his debut, Matri brought a ball swung in from the left down and laid it off, assisting Matías Fernández who poked Fiorentina into the lead. He then slid into to get on the end of one of Manuel Pasqual’s 7 crosses that afternoon, finding the net on his first start just like he had done for Cagliari and for Italy. A second came five minutes before half-time, after Pasqual, free again on the left, pulled it back for Fernandez, whose shot Matri bundled home on the rebound. 

It was his first brace since December 22, 2012. In the space of just 47 minutes at Fiorentina he had scored twice as many as in the previous 939 at Milan. He might have had a hat-trick had he not been forced to go off at half-time after feeling a tightness in his groin. Not even that though could take the shine off his day. “It was a liberation,” Matri said. You wonder if Milan might come to regret the decision. Pazzini is injured again. M’baye Niang has gone to Montpellier. All of a sudden they’re short of strikers. Their loss is Fiorentina’s gain.

Do you think Matri can be a success at Fiorentina? Let us know in the comments below