It’s not easy being a Fiorentina supporter. One of the club’s most popular fan pages on Instagram, sufferingfiorentina, turns this truth into a running joke. The humour comes from taking a perverse pleasure in the pain brought about by the constant cycle of high expectations collapsing into spectacular failure. It’s almost as if Fiorentina fans have been conditioned to crave il suffering.
But behind the memes, a genuine sense of tragedy seems to loom over the club. In January, Fiorentina president Rocco Commisso passed away at the age of 76. The cause of death was not yet confirmed at the time of writing, though rumours about his health had circulated for some time. The fiery, passionate owner had been unusually quiet in recent months. On its 100th birthday, Fiorentina finds itself near the bottom of the table, with an open construction site for a stadium, a deceased owner and an uncertain future.
The Commisso family intends to retain ownership of the club, with Rocco’s son Giuseppe taking the reins as president. Sporting director Fabio Paratici’s arrival bodes well for the club’s future. His experience at Juventus and Tottenham Hotspur is seen as a step up from the outgoing Daniele Pradè and a sign that Fiorentina intends to pursue ambition with a more coherent strategy.
Yet recent history has shown that tragedy and misfortune are not foreign to Fiorentina fans. After a poor start to last season, the team surged under new manager Raffaele Palladino. Moise Kean began firing on all cylinders, Dodô and Robin Gosens dominated on the wings, and the midfield trio of Yacine Adli, Danilo Cataldi and Edoardo Bove kept things orderly while providing attacking thrust. On December 1, 2024, after 15 match days and an eight-game winning streak (including emphatic victories over Roma and AC Milan) Fiorentina sat atop the table, tied with Atalanta, and preparing to face Inter Milan at the San Siro.
After just 14 minutes, Edoardo Bove collapsed for no apparent reason. Panic spread across the pitch as teammates surrounded him, shielding him from cameras, while doctors rushed him to the hospital. The 22-year-old had suffered a cardiac arrest. Though he survived, Italian football regulations prevent a player from competing with a defibrillator, ending his Serie A career just as he was emerging as a standout talent. The team never truly regained its momentum, losing immediately to Bologna and finishing the season in sixth place.
Earlier, on March 17, while Fiorentina was on a team retreat ahead of a game with Atalanta, CEO Joe Barone, Commisso’s right-hand man, suffered a cardiac arrest and was rushed to San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. He passed away two days later, at age 58. Barone had been the operational bridge between ownership and the team, deeply involved in strategy, transfers and club development. He was also a controversial figure, often positioned as a scapegoat for the club’s struggles. Like Commisso, he could be stubborn and at times polarizing, but no one could deny the passion and humanity in his work, a quality that Fiorentina supporters above all appreciated in a world increasingly dominated by faceless investors.
Perhaps the most searing tragedy for Fiorentina fans came on March 14, 2018. During a team retreat in Udine, ahead of a match against Udinese, captain Davide Astori was found dead in his hotel room from a cardiac arrest. He was only 31 years old. A solid defender with 14 caps for the Italian national team, Astori was not a star in the modern sense, but he was universally respected by teammates, opponents and supporters. Appointed captain months earlier, he embodied stability at a club often lacking it.
Astori’s death sent shockwaves through Italian football. All professional league matches were postponed that day, while tributes poured in from every corner of the sport. Fiorentina retired his number 13, as did Cagliari, the club where he spent the bulk of his career. For years, his initials and number were stitched into the captain’s armband, which must have been a heavy burden to carry for his teammate Germán Pezzella. Even after league regulations forced the return to a standardized armband, Astori’s presence lingers in the 13th-minute applause from fans.
All this without even getting into the purely sporting misfortunes: the lack of silverware since 2001; three lost finals in two years; the massive investments in strikers Giuseppe Rossi and Mario Gómez that came to nothing when injuries struck both; the disastrous refereeing decisions against Bayern Munich that cost Fiorentina a Champions League quarter-final; Calciopoli (alright, that one was self-inflicted); Batistuta’s injury in 1998 when Fiorentina was first in the standings, only for his substitute Edmundo to flee to Rio for Carnival; the riots over Roberto Baggio’s move to Juventus; and all the way back to the controversial penalty that cost us the league title in 1982. It’s been a hell of a ride.
But it all pales in front of real human tragedy. Fiorentina, a club that already lives on the edge of romantic suffering, has been repeatedly reminded that football does not exist in a vacuum, and that no amount of planning can fully insulate it from life’s cruellest turns. But still, supporters remain, with their irony and gallows humour coexisting with fierce loyalty. Supporting Fiorentina has never been about silverware, as much as the fans may crave it. It has always been about a sense of belonging. Il suffering, yes. But also the stubborn refusal to look away, even when it hurts.
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