Fiorentina Fires Fabio Grosso, Brings Back Paolo Vanoli After Disastrous Start to the Season

Three matchdays, nine goals conceded and just one scored. With numbers like that, any club would panic, and Fiorentina was no exception. Fabio Grosso, the 2006 World Cup winner with Italy, lasted exactly three Serie A matches in charge of the viola bench before the front office decided to make a clean break.

The 4-0 rout in the opener against Roma had already set off alarm bells. Then came an even more painful defeat: 0-3 against Frosinone, a newly promoted side, on the very day the club was celebrating its centennial. As if that weren't enough, Saturday brought a 1-2 loss to Torino at the Artemio Franchi, closing out a start to the season that left Fiorentina pointless and with the worst goal difference in the league.

Facing that reality, the club moved fast. Grosso's exit was confirmed on Sunday, and just a day later, on Monday, the club announced the return of Paolo Vanoli as head coach. Yes, the same coach who had left that very locker room just months earlier after guiding the team to safety. What goes around comes around, and in Italian soccer it seems to come around faster than usual.

An Express Return

Vanoli had taken charge of Fiorentina in November 2025, replacing Stefano Pioli with the club sitting last in Serie A. He ended up saving the team from relegation, but that wasn't enough to earn him a new contract: the club chose to go with Grosso for this season instead. Now, with a crisis on its hands, the front office called him back.

The club's statement noted that the coach accepted the return "with enthusiasm," and he already ran his first training session Monday afternoon. There's no time to waste: the squad is shaken and needs to turn the crisis around as soon as possible.

Among the familiar faces Vanoli will find is Franco Mastantuono, the Argentine midfielder on loan from Real Madrid, who is thus switching coaches again just weeks into the season.

Who Is Vanoli

A former left back who played for Parma and Fiorentina itself, along with stints in Scotland with Rangers and in Greek soccer, Vanoli built his coaching career starting in the lower ranks of Italian soccer. He later joined Antonio Conte's coaching staff, both at Chelsea and at Inter Milan.

His first job as a head coach came in 2021, with Spartak Moscow, where he won the Russian Cup. A year later he took over at Venezia, guiding the club from the lower reaches of Serie B up to promotion to the top flight in 2024. He then managed Torino before joining Fiorentina for the first time, the club he now returns to with the job of stopping a slide that, if not corrected soon, could get a lot worse.