A New Renaissance in Florence

Those of us who paid atten­tion in high school know the Renais­sance began in Italy and spread across the West caus­ing a change in art, music, and thought.  Its affects have greatly shaped the mod­ern world.  The cen­ter of the Renais­sance began in Flo­rence or as it is known in Italy: Firenze.  Talented peo­ple like Leonardo Da Vinci, Bot­ti­celli, and Michelan­gelo (and the other Ninja Tur­tles) applied their tal­ents and daz­zled the pub­lic.  In the 21st cen­tury in Flo­rence there seems to be another renais­sance hap­pen­ing, not only is AC Fiorentina back from the depths of Serie C1 but there is also a tal­ent daz­zling the public, on the soc­cer pitch.  He is Ital­ian and his name is Alberto Gilardino. 

The rebirth of Alberto Gilardino’s career has come with his high price trans­fer from Milan to Flo­rence.  His renais­sance story began in 2005, when he arrived at Milan after back to back 23 goal sea­sons at Parma, he was to form a dev­as­tat­ing goal scor­ing attack with Andriy Shevchenko.  They played together for only one year then Sheva was off to Chelsea and his failed exper­i­ment to become a top Pre­mier­ship goal marksmen. 

As for “Gila” despite a decent goal scor­ing rate he got less play­ing time and became more of a fix­ture on the bench as Carlo Ancelotti leaned more on Kaka and Pippo Inza­ghi to get goals. His play­ing time and sub­se­quently his goals decreased every year since his arrival at the San Siro and he seemed to have lost his form with Milan los­ing con­fi­dence in him. Last sea­son he played 18 min­utes total in the final 2 months of the season. A sea­son that saw Milan out of the Top 4 for the 1st time since 2000–2001 season.

Then 2008, in need of a new out­look and with rumors spread­ing of Milan acquir­ing strik­ers like Didier Drogba, Emmanuel Ade­bayor, and Samuel Eto’o. Gila met up with an old acquain­tance who knew exactly how to use his goal scor­ing tal­ents. That man was his old coach at Parma and cur­rent coach at Fiorentina, Cesare Piran­delli. The reunion with Piran­delli has re-ignited Gilardino’s career and the 15 mil­lion euros I Viola spent to get him has been worth it. A true rebirth indeed. In 8 appear­ances (both Cham­pi­ons League and Serie A) he has 7 goals this sea­son. All last year he had 9 goals.

His tim­ing has been excel­lent as well, he scored a goal in the 89th minute to get a point from Juven­tus. He scored twice against Lyon in the Cham­pi­ons League to get a point on the road.  He has scored game win­ners against Bologna & Genoa and sits in a tie for 4th place in the Serie A goal scor­ers table.  He is Fiorentina’s offense scor­ing 4 of their 6 goals in Serie A and scor­ing 3 of their 4 Cham­pi­ons League goals. 

If Gilardino can con­tinue his goal scor­ing exploits and Fiorentina make a seri­ous run at the Scud­etto and/or the Cham­pi­ons League.  Gila could be look­ing at another Serie A & Ital­ian foot­baller of the Year award thus hail­ing a new Renais­sance in Flo­rence with Alberto Gilardino lead­ing the way. 

NEW UEFA.com Gilardino Interview

Tagged as: Alberto Gilardino, Fiorentina, Serie A