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Why Fiorentina fans may never forgive Prandelli for Rossi's Italy omission

Giampiero Sposito / Reuters

Not even Cesare Prandelli could carry the crowd on this one. On Sunday the Italy manager submitted his World Cup squad to the national football federation, naming the 24 players (including a reserve) that he will take with him to Brazil. Giuseppe Rossi was not among them. 

The Fiorentina striker’s absence was met with shock, and then anger by his club’s supporters. Rossi’s partner Jenna Sodano began retweeting messages from a Viola fan site, objecting to his exclusion. A poll by one of the most prominent local newspapers, La Nazione, found that 74% of readers disagreed with Prandelli’s decision to leave the player out of his squad. 

It has been a long time since the Italy manager was questioned like this in Florence, a city where he is widely adored. Prandelli was the one who transformed Fiorentina into European contenders during the late noughties, taking charge of a side that had barely escaped relegation in 2005 and leading them to a Uefa Cup semi-final within three years. He followed that up by securing Champions League berths in each of the next two seasons. 

He accomplished all this while mourning the death of his wife and childhood sweetheart Manuela Caffi, who passed away after a long battle with breast cancer in November 2007. Fiorentina’s fans rallied around Prandelli at the time, offering support to the manager and his family. He would later state that their affection had been crucial to helping him through the grieving process, preventing him from quitting work altogether.

When Prandelli left to take the Italy job in 2010, those fans continued to support him. National team chiefs promptly scheduled his first competitive home game, against the Faroe Islands, to take place in Florence – a move that under different circumstances might have backfired horribly. 

The city has an uneasy relationship with the Azzurri dating back to the late 80s and early 90s, when a series of perceived injustices against Fiorentina created a powerful sense of animosity towards the Italian Football Federation. Supporters at the Stadio Artemio Franchi infamously cheered against Italy during a friendly against Mexico in 1993, after which Florence did not host another international game for more than a decade. 

For Prandelli, though, the fans were willing to put their grievances aside. Italy were well-backed during that game against the Faroes, which they won 5-0. They returned a year later, beating Slovenia 1-0. 

Even so, it is probably for the best that Italy are not playing in Florence this summer. No matter how warmly Fiorentina’s fans might feel towards their former manager, few might take his side over that of their current striker. 

Rossi has done so much right since joining Fiorentina in January of last year, working tirelessly to find his way back from one knee injury after another. Nobody really knew what to expect when he arrived, still recuperating from two consecutive cruciate ligament tears, but in the first half of this season he took Serie A by storm, scoring 14 goals in 18 games. 

Much like Prandelli, Rossi had overcome personal tragedy to reach this point. His father, Fernando, passed away in February 2010, leaving a void in the player’s life that he did not know how to fill. Rossi Sr had followed his son all over Europe for the last decade, watching over his boy and looking after the little things like bills, hot meals and clean clothes. 

“He used to do all those things,” confessed Giuseppe in a 2011 interview with La Repubblica. “He used to say that one day it would be up to me, but I never thought it would be this soon.”

But it is no great hardship to look after one’s own household chores. What Rossi Jr missed more was the advice, the guidance, the friendship. He had fallen in love with football while watching Serie A games on TV with his dad in Teaneack, New Jersey. Fernando had also been his first coach.

And it was his father, born in the tiny village of Fraine in Italy’s Abruzzo region, who took Giuseppe back to that country as a teenager – believing that his son had the potential to make it in Europe’s biggest leagues. Perhaps it is also for Fernando that Rossi had clung to his World Cup dream so tightly, stating right from the start of this season that representing Italy in Brazil was his No1 goal.

That was before he was injured again, going down under a rough challenge from Livorno’s Leandro Rinaudo in January. Although there was no ligament tear this time around, the injury was still severe enough to rule him out for most of the rest of the season. 

It was a cruel blow, to say the least. Rossi had gone through heartbreak twice already when it came to major international tournaments, overlooked by Marcello Lippi in 2010 and then ruled out of Euro 2012 by the first of the two cruciate tears that he suffered in Spain. 

The striker has been asked many times whether he wishes that he had declared for the United States instead of Italy, a decision which would likely have secured him a place in South Africa four years ago. But it was Lippi who expressed remorse this week over his decision not to call Rossi up for that same tournament, which the Azzurri exited without a single victory at the group stage. 

“I told Rossi that I regret not taking him with me to South Africa,” said Lippi after paying Prandelli’s squad a visit at Coverciano. “I cheer for every player in the national team, but him especially, because that is the only time in my career that I have ever had second thoughts over my decision not to call up a certain player.”

The question now is whether Prandelli will wind up feeling a similar regret. He has not spoken publically since his squad was announced, but we can be sure that the decision to omit Rossi was not an easy one. The manager had spoken for months about giving his forward every chance to recover and prove his fitness, but in the end seemed just to run out of time. 

Rossi has played a total of 211 minutes of football since recovering from his injury, 71 of which came during Italy’s friendly against Ireland on Saturday. Prandelli started the striker and left him on the field for a good chunk of the second half, hoping to glean some insight into the player’s readiness for the tournament in Brazil. 

But the match was a limp affair, made worse by a bad injury to Riccardo Montolivo after just nine minutes. The midfielder had his own World Cup aspirations ended when he broke his leg under a challenge from Alex Pearce. Alberto Aquilani also left the game injured before half-time. 

Under such circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Italy’s players should become reluctant to commit themselves to further challenges. Rossi failed to impress, drifting too deep and lacking conviction in his movements, but the same could be said for almost every other player in a blue shirt. 

Prandelli acknowledged his predicament to reporters after the game. “The psychological block that restricted the whole team [after Montolivo’s injury] affected Rossi, too,” said the manager. “It’s difficult to judge him this evening but after re-watching the match, that is what I will have to do.”

His words betrayed his frustration at the unenviable choice left ahead of him. To include Rossi would be to gamble a precious place on a player who might not be ready for the immense physical strain of playing a World Cup in Brazil. But to exclude him would mean leaving out arguably the most technically gifted of all Italy’s attackers; a player who found the net once every 95.4 minutes for Fiorentina this season.

Prandelli chose the latter option. A part of Florence may never forgive him, if it turns out to be the wrong one. 

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