Over New Year in Italy, it is customary to serve a dish of lentils with thick slices of cotechino sausage. The lentils themselves, round and chewy, are reminiscent of little coins in shape and are supposed to augur prosperity to all who eat them.
After very nearly ending the first half of the season winless in Serie A, Fiorentina needed all the help they could get — figurative and symbolic. Bingeing on lentils during their detention at the club’s training ground, as punishment for being bottom at Christmas, would have been understandable…
An overdue purple patch?
At the end of last week’s defeat to Parma, the Viola’s 24th and final loss of 2025, the away fans at the Tardini made a signal to the players. Don’t bother coming over. They were sick of the sight of them.
Fiorentina coach Paolo Vanoli has started taking drastic measures.
After standing by Luca Ranieri since taking over from Stefano Pioli in November, he stripped him of the captain’s armband and gave it to goalkeeper David de Gea. He then left out last season’s top scorer Moise Kean for Sunday’s game against promoted Cremonese.
Private matters meant Kean had missed preparation for the game, in agreement with the club. His absence, however, led to speculation about a possible move in the transfer window. More drama.
New signing Manor Solomon, a loanee from Tottenham Hotspur, caused controversy — and not because the Premier League club’s co-sporting director, Fabio Paratici, is set to become Fiorentina’s new head of football. The rows were in city hall as local politicians fell out spectacularly over the moral case for and against a boycott of Israeli athletes.
Solomon made his debut as a second-half substitute, regardless, at the weekend. He angled a cross to the far post in stoppage time, one last chance in a game seemingly destined to finish goalless. The ball bounced off his new team-mate Niccolo Fortini, making things awkward for Cremonese goalkeeper Emil Audero. The Italian of Indonesian descent kept it out but couldn’t control it, presenting another Fiorentina reserve with a tap-in.
It was Kean.
He’d been included in the squad, after all. Edin Dzeko had woken up that morning with a swollen ankle. Roberto Piccoli started. But Kean came on six minutes from time and scored, as he did in the 5-1 win against 10-man Udinese a fortnight ago.
Fiorentina have now won two of their last three games. They’re off the bottom, three points from safety.
“We’ve given ourselves clear objectives,” Fiorentina chief executive Alessandro Ferrari said. “We think seven wins and eight draws can keep us up.” Starting 2026 with one was a step in the right direction.
The fans applauded the team at full time. On Instagram, Kean posted a photo of Psalm 35 — a prayer for David and a plea with God to fight his enemies. “May all who gloat over my distress be put to shame and confusion; may all who exalt themselves over me be clothed with shame and disgrace.”
This brings us to another under-fire striker, another David.
Flop of the season in Serie A?
In the 66th minute of Juventus’ game against Lecce on Saturday night, captain Manuel Locatelli picked up the ball and handed it to Jonathan David. He wanted the Canada international to take a penalty that would help clinch an eighth win in nine games for Juventus in all competitions.
It was a noble gesture. Locatelli has tried to help David integrate in Turin. When local papers claimed David was distant and didn’t always receive invites to team dinners, Locatelli pointedly posted a photo of the two together on social media.
David has been in desperate need of a league goal. He scored on his Serie A debut against Parma back in August. Since then, he has been Canada Dry.
An injury to Dusan Vlahovic in November presented him with the chance to play with greater continuity. The replacement of Igor Tudor with Luciano Spalletti also placed him in the hands of a striker whisperer. Four players have won the Serie A scoring crown under the shaman-like Tuscan.
In other words, David should be thriving. Instead, his first season in Italy — at a club significantly bigger than Gent or Lille — has become a doom loop.
David can’t catch a break. He went close to opening the scoring against Lecce in a game Juventus dominated. Wladimiro Falcone, the former child actor in goal for the Salentini, got a hand to David’s glancing header. The ball hit the post and bounced back into his grateful arms.
When David tried to dink a penalty down the middle, Falcone — later awarded man of the match — scissor-kicked it away.
“You should take it then!” Spalletti told pundits in the DAZN studio after listening to criticism of David’s half-hearted Panenka. “I think you should have a go at being penalty-takers.”
The 66-year-old, who always squares up to the cameras in a boxer’s stance, was broadly empathetic with his player and had no issue with Kenan Yildiz or Locatelli insisting David take the spot kick. These things happen — and Spalletti has been here before.
When he replaced Rudi Garcia at Roma in January 2016, Dzeko was in a rut. The fans called him Edin Cieco (Cieco translates as ‘blind’ in Italian). Spalletti tried to shake him out of it before going striker-less with Stephan El Shaarawy, Diego Perotti and Mohamed Salah in pursuit of Champions League qualification. He then set to work on Dzeko the following season. Dzeko had his best-ever season, scoring 39 times.
It’s something for optimists to bear in mind while pessimists replay David’s misses against Milan, Villarreal and Pafos.
Misfiring forwards are why the title race is thinning out all of a sudden. Juventus’ draw with Lecce and Roma’s defeat in Bergamo cut them adrift. Bunches are belatedly forming.
Fading Roma
Gian Piero Gasperini’s return to the New Balance Arena was, on the face of it, an unhappy one. He tried to contain his emotions and did not go behind the goal and glad-hand the ultras like Daniele De Rossi did on his return to the Stadio Olimpico as Genoa coach a week ago.
He limited himself to a round of applause for the chants in his name and the banners welcoming him back as an “indelible symbol” of a decade in which the city of Bergamo became a place football’s elite feared to tread.
One of Gasp’s disciples, Raffaele Palladino, is showing there is life beyond him for the Dea. The 1-0 win over Roma was Atalanta’s seventh in nine games in all competitions — and their first against a team in the top half.
The absence of Ademola Lookman and an early injury to Sead Kolasinac didn’t matter. Bar a couple of scares, Atalanta were worthy winners even if Gasperini called their goal “absurd” and “inexplicable”.
He had a problem with Giorgio Scalvini putting his hands on goalkeeper Mile Svilar’s face before bundling a cross from a corner into the net. Svilar had missed the delivery he came to collect in a mix-up with Devyne Rensch. The contact that followed was unmistakable and the decision to let the goal stand divided opinion. It distracted from Roma’s fourth defeat in six league games and their continued struggles in front of goal. Six of their 18 league games have finished goalless. The last Gasperini team to be this toothless was his final Genoa outfit; the one with Suso, a geriatric Goran Pandev and a back-up striker whose name literally translated as Panic.
Perhaps the only forwards to have fared worse than David are the ones at his disposal. Artem Dovbyk came on for Evan Ferguson with his team needing a goal and still looked like the player who missed a penalty against Lille and then a re-take in October. The Ukrainian later said he regretted allowing Matias Soule to take the re-take of the re-take which, lest we forget, was also missed.
As a moment, it cast a shadow on Roma’s season. That they were in contention for the title was largely down to Svilar’s impregnability and a lockdown defensive phase. This has started to desert Roma. Evan N’Dicka’s AFCON-enforced absence and the fatigue felt by Bryan Cristante and Gianluca Mancini who, along with Mario Hermoso, will be suspended for the trip to Lecce in midweek, make it even more urgent for the attack to pick up the slack.
The stutters of Juventus, Roma and Bologna have allowed Como to stay on the Champions League wheel. They’re not in Europe, can re-up in January and must cautiously fancy their chances of a top-four finish after edging a 1-0 win against Udinese at the weekend. The games-in-hand left over from the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia now promise to really spread things out.
Inter, Milan and Napoli all won at the weekend. They all have a game to make up from their sojourns in the Middle East. Win them and the cushion to their own Champions League qualification is substantial. Nine points in Inter’s case, eight for Milan and seven for Napoli.
The title race takes shape
At a time when the calendar is as congested as someone suffering from a bad bout of the flu, they are breathing freely.
Milan’s brute consistency has overcome a quietly severe injury list. Much like Roma and Juventus, they too have barely got any goals from what one might categorise as an orthodox striker, although that may change with the signing of Niclas Fullkrug.
Christian Pulisic and Rafa Leao have started together once in the league all season (the Derby della Madonnina). Luckily, when one has been out or not fit enough to start, the other has been unprecedented in their ruthless efficiency.
So it was in Cagliari on Friday when, for the 12th time in the 16 occasions they have taken the lead, Milan (and Leao) scored with their first shot on target.
Clean sheets continue to come, even without perceived defensive linchpin Matteo Gabbia. They are helped by Luka Modric’s ability to retain possession and take the pressure off the back three. At 40, Modric has remarkably played more minutes than anyone else at the club this season.
More impressive still is the work overseen by Antonio Conte in Naples. Ravaged by injury, the look and playing style of his team is completely different from the one that won the league and began this season. The fluid, wannabe-relationist 4-1-4-1 of the early weeks of the campaign has had to go into storage, supplanted by a 3-4-3. Old reference points from this time last year, like Scott McTominay running off Romelu Lukaku, are a distant memory, as Napoli now break on and dribble past teams with Noa Lang, Rasmus Hojlund and the ascendant David Neres, who went off injured in the weekend’s win away at Lazio.
Asked if he expects anything from the January transfer window amid the limitations of a soft embargo, Conte demurred: “I don’t want to touch on that as it’s bad luck.” The memories of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s sale to Paris Saint-Germain this time last year are still fresh and a case of “too soon” to be joked about.
Inter, too, have issues. Marcus Thuram’s intermittent availability through the autumn largely went unnoticed thanks to Ange-Yoan Bonny and the much hyped Pio Esposito. Skipper Lautaro Martinez is playing with a cast on his hand to protect a broken finger. Piotr Zielinski has stepped up in midfield and given Henrikh Mkhitaryan a break. He is playing his best football since moving to the club 18 months ago. No team has much quality in reserve in midfield as Inter, as evidenced by their willingness to listen to offers for an Italy international like Davide Frattesi this month.
As the least experienced coach in the title race, Cristian Chivu looks unfazed and unflappable. Sunday’s 3-1 win over Bologna flattered the visitors. It could have been five or six. League leaders Inter and rivals Milan and Napoli must have all had their New Year lentils. Who looks set to prosper? Surely Serie A again as another title race promises to go to the wire.