The year ended with news that many within Italian football had been dreading. After a heated debate between government ministers on Thursday, the Decreto Crescita (growth decree) that granted tax breaks to foreign professionals was allowed to lapse.
Introduced in April 2019, the decree had a profound effect on Serie A, reducing the tax burden for teams signing players from abroad by as much as 50%. It made possible transfers that otherwise may never have happened. The football finance website calcioefinanza.it estimated Roma and Milan are each saving more than €20m annually on their wage bills, with Juventus, on €17.55m, not far behind.
The changes will not apply retrospectively, so there is no impact on players already under contract. Still Milan’s CEO, Giorgio Furlani, said the decree’s abrupt end would alter his team’s plans for the January window. His Inter counterpart, Beppe Marotta, called it an “own goal” for Italian football. Lazio’s president, Claudio Lotito, cited the presence of three Serie A teams in European finals last season as evidence of how the decree had strengthened the domestic game.
Yet there is another side to the coin. The Italian footballers’ association (AIC) released a statement welcoming the news, arguing the decree had given teams an incentive to buy from abroad instead of developing players locally. “Finally, from 1 January 2024, Italian players and foreign players can compete on the same terms,” said the AIC president, Umberto Calcagno.
If he wanted a supporting example of what can happen when you give homegrown kids a chance, he could have pointed to Fiorentina’s match against Torino on Friday. A cautious game was decided in the 83rd minute by a link-up between two young Italians, the 19-year-old Michael Kayode swinging over a cross for Luca Ranieri to head in and deliver a 1-0 win to the Viola.
Fiorentina 1-0 Torino, Napoli 0-0 Monza, Genoa 1-1 Internazionale, Lazio 3-1 Frosinone, Atalanta 1-0 Lecce, Cagliari 0-0 Empoli, Udinese 3-0 Bologna, Milan 1-0 Sassuolo, Verona 0-1 Salernitana, Juventus 1-0 Roma
It was a victory that allowed Fiorentina to end 2023 in the top four. Theirs was a marathon year, taking in 64 games as they went to the finals of the Coppa Italia and Europa Conference League. To lose both was crushing, but to bounce back with such a strong start to this season shows what sort of foundations the manager, Vincenzo Italiano, has been laying.
Few could have imagined a year ago that Ranieri would become integral to Fiorentina’s project. Although he spent five years in the club’s academy, the first four seasons of his professional career were spent on loan, either at lower-league clubs or battling top-flight relegation with Salernitana.
But Fiorentina’s qualification for the Europa Conference League last season created an opportunity. Uefa’s homegrown player rule reserves four of 25 spots in each team’s squad for those trained by the club for at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21. Ranieri fitted the bill. Nobody was quite sure what his best position was, having played at left-back and in midfield, but it was better to have an extra body than not.
The Conference League was the making of Ranieri. He started for almost the whole knockout phase, including the final, at centre-back. Italiano was rotating his squad to keep legs fresh through a long campaign but by the end of the season had begun to give Ranieri opportunities in Serie A too.
Today Ranieri is a regular name on the teamsheet. “When you get lovely stories like this, all the credit belongs to the player, who arrived here with great humility and a spirit of sacrifice,” said Italiano on Sunday. “He knew he was behind at the start, but with hard work, a serious attitude, goals, he is earning his minutes and the faith we have in him.”
Ranieri had already scored three times in the Europa Conference League this season, including the equaliser at Ferencvaros that ensured his team topped their group – avoiding an extra tie in the playoff round. This was his first for Fiorentina in Serie A, further securing his status as a fan favourite.
Local media speculated that Ranieri must have done enough to be considered for a call-up from Luciano Spalletti, the Italy manager. It might be a little soon for that, and Ranieri does still look sometimes like a player who doesn’t fit neatly into a box: too slender to dominate physical duels against stronger centre-forwards and most effective when left spare to read the game and jump passes instead of sticking to a man.
Then again, Spalletti’s predecessors lamented the scarce options available to them for the national team. Centre-back is a position of relative strength for Italy – with Alessandro Bastoni and Giorgio Scalvini both emerging as exceptional talents – but, as Ranieri’s past year at Fiorentina shows, it never hurts to give yourself another option. For now, the player is delighted to have earned a spot in a club side that continue to defy gravity. Fiorentina lost one of their most influential players when Sofyan Amrabat joined Manchester United last summer, and still have not found an adequate replacement for Dusan Vlahovic since selling him at the start of 2022. Yet Italiano has kept them moving forward.
Arthur Cabral and Luka Jovic were both packed off last summer after failing to deliver the goals they were signed for, but Lucas Beltrán and M’Bala Nzola have not fared any better. The team’s leading scorers are Nico González and Giacomo Bonaventura, a left-winger and a No 10, but Ranieri and his centre-back partner, Lucas Martínez Quarta, are close behind on four each.
That speaks to the collective ethos and pragmatic style that Italiano has embraced. He is by nature an attacking coach and Fiorentina boast the second-highest possession percentage in Serie A, but if the forwards won’t stick the ball in the net then other methods must be found. Twelve of their goals this season – 24% of the total in all competitions – were headers.
At times, that too can become predictable. Fiorentina endured one of their most frustrating games of this season at home to Juventus, when they had nearly 70% of the ball and delivered 50 crosses into the box but lost 1-0 and never looked that much like scoring.
How much can you ask, though, of a team already outperforming all projections? Fiorentina were expected to run out of steam when González damaged his hamstring in December, but have since won three out of three.
Further challenges lie ahead, with Riccardo Sottil picking up an injury against Torino and another winger, Christian Kouamé, heading to the Africa Cup of Nations. “We’ll see what news comes from the transfer market,” said Italiano. “We already had in mind to do something in that part of the pitch.”
Fiorentina, just like every other club in Italy, will find their options narrowed by the lapsing of the growth decree. They will not need to look far for a reminder that this need not be the disaster others foresee.
• This article was amended on 3 January 2024. It is Christian Kouamé, of Ivory Coast, who will be away playing in the Africa Cup of Nations, not Jonathan Ikoné as an earlier version said. The latter is a France international.
