Gennaro Gattuso lasted 25 days at FiorentinaOn May 25, the ‘viola’ team announced their hiring as coach for the next two seasons. However, discrepancies with ownership and Jorge Mendes’ role in the discussions have broken the link just a month after signing it.
The Calabrian coach left the Naples after finishing the season after De Laurentiis, president of the club, decided not to give continuity to his project. The team had a good season, but on the last day they lost the position of Champions League. La Fiorentina, American-owned club, lI had been in contact with Gattuso almost since the beginning of the year and working on his arrival. It was the first choice of its owner Rocco Commisso and, after several ups and downs, they managed to close their signing.
Rino signed for two seasons at the rate of more than 2 million per year and everything seemed idyllic. After hiring, Rocco Commisso showed his love for Gattuso in a heartfelt statement: “He is a great person, he talks face to face as I like and we will understand each other well. He is Calabrian and has had a life history similar to mine. I have already told him that when the criticism begins I will be the first to defend him.” All of that fell apart in less than three weeks.
Gattuso with Joseph Commisso, son of the owner
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Two different market strategies, commissions and Jorge Mendes
One of the conditions that he put Gattuso to sign was for the team to make a revolution in the squad and sign 4-5 starting level players. Daniele Pradè (sports director) and Joe barone (general manager) accepted it and everything indicated that he was going to see a Fiorentina competitive after mediocre seasons in which he had come dangerously close to descent.
What they did not expect in the offices of Fiorentina was that all the signings that Gattuso was going to want were represented by Jorge Mendes, who has been a key figure in understanding the failure of the Gattuso-Fiorentina marriage. The five core signings proposed by the coach were carried by the Portuguese agent.
Fiorentina had agreed to sign Sérgio Oliveira, 29-year-old midfielder from Port. Negotiations with the Portuguese club and Mendes seemed to be going well, but there was a turning point last Saturday, June 12 as reported by the journalist Sara Meini in RAI Tuscany. Joe Barone and Mendes met that day in Milan to try to close the signing of Oliviera, but the CEO of Fiorentina found that costs doubled (from € 10-12M transfer to € 20M) and the commissions for the agent also increased substantially. Barone did not accept those conditions and informed Rocco Commisso. The owner, then, broke all agreements with Mendes. Among them was one for Gonçalo Guedes, which will come out of Valencia this summer.
At that time, and always according to RAI Tuscany, was when Gattuso “went crazy” against the ‘viola’ leadership considering that the promises that were made when you signed had been broken. The executives proposed “valid alternatives”, but the technician did not respond. Since that day, on Saturday, Fiorentina has not heard from Gattuso again and on Monday 14 the lawyers of the two parties got down to work to work on the termination of the contract. A contract that was signed, but not deposited in the Lega.
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The commissions that Jorge Mendes requested and the lurch that the Portuguese hit in the negotiations were the most important factors. The same information already mentioned pointed out that demanded 40 million euros in this concept of commissions to take five of his clients to Fiorentina. Alfredo Pedullà, from Sportitalia, added that 8 of them were for Sérgio Oliveira’s operation. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the ‘viola’ leadership. It is also said that in one of the last conferences there were “serious insults” to a member of the Commisso family.
The surprise came when, on the same day he terminated his contract with Fiorentina, Gattuso began to sound very loud to take over the vacancy in the Tottenham bench. His good relationship with Fabio Paratici, the new football director of the English team, seemed to bring him closer to the bench. Nothing could be further from the truth. According The Athletic, this option fell by the protests of the fans against the club in social networks in which they remembered some behaviors of the now Italian coach in his stage as a player. Now everything indicates that he will take a few months off after a period with a lot of movement.