Since most people went out on vacation during the Christmas holiday, and many businesses were temporarily suspended, the backlog of work in Florence during this period was actually not very large, not to mention that Zhuang Mingge was still an out-and-out "hands-off shopkeeper".

Most of the work is assigned to the three general managers under his hands to deal with it, Zhuang Mingge himself only needs to grasp the general direction of Florence's development, this is Zhuang Mingge's attitude towards managing Florence, if everything must be done by himself, then what do the club need those employees to do?

Although Zhuang Mingge's approach is partly due to his laziness......

With the Christmas holidays coming to an end, the players are returning to Fiorentina one after another to prepare for the second half of the season and sprint for the final title!

Soon, Fiorentina fans who watched the training on the sidelines of the training ground found that among the players who returned to the team, a familiar figure was missing, that is, Fiorentina's captain, Batistuta!

And the reason why the Argentine god of war did not return to the team is very simple, Saudi Arabia hosted the second King Fahd Cup at the beginning of this year, inviting the champions of the five continental Nations Cups, plus the host Saudi Arabia team, a total of six teams to participate.

Argentina, the winner of the 1993 Copa America, was naturally on offer, and the Argentine Football Federation agreed to the Saudi Football Federation's invitation, which forced Fiorentina to lose their leading scorer and captain for most of January.

Zhuang Mingge was very dissatisfied with this, and when the Serie A league began to sprint to the stage, Batistuta's absence was undoubtedly fatal.

Don't look at Inzaghi and Montella have also scored a lot of goals this season, but their brilliant performances are largely due to Barty's presence. It is because Batistuta is at the front to attract the attention of the opposing defenders that these youngsters have plenty of room to grow.

The most typical example is the later Gilardino, who joined AC Milan as a two-time Serie A Silver Boot winner in the summer of 05, and scored 17 league goals in the 05-06 season, although the number of goals was not as good as when he was in Parma, but this was largely due to Gilardino's own change in status in the team and the diversion of his own shooting opportunities by Shevchenko and Kaka; After Sheva left Milan, Gilardino, who had lost the protection of his superstar, became the top player, which did not match his own style of play, and behind him, Kaka was not a master passer, which directly led to a sharp drop in his goals in the following seasons, and Zuihou had to be forced to leave AC Milan.

Although there is also a classmate Vieri in the Fiorentina first team who claims to be "Barty's apprentice", Zhuang Mingge does not think that Vieri, who is not very famous, can replace Barty's role in Fiorentina.

The impact of Barty's absence was soon felt as Fiorentina travelled to Turin on 8 January for the 15th round of Serie A, but this time against not Juventus, but against his city rivals, Torino.

If there is one club that is the most unlucky among the many clubs in Italian football, Zhuang Mingge will definitely count Torino as one.

The 40s of the last century were the "Turin era" in the history of Italian football, which began in the 1942-1943 season before the Second Shijie War, and ended in 1949 when the Supega air disaster destroyed the entire Torino team.

The Second Shijie War not only destroyed the Italian economy, but also devastated the vitality of Italian football, and at the same time led to the loss of many elite players in Italian football. After the Second World War, Italy was in a period of reconstruction, and the old powerhouses Juventus, Bologna and Inter Milan, which had dominated Italian football before the war, experienced an unprecedented decline.

The rise of Torino at this time gave the Italians hope for a revival of Italian football. In the friendly match between Italy and Portugal and Spain in 1949, the Italian team defeated Portugal 4:1 and defeated Spain 3:1 in Madrid, in these two games, the Italian team reached 10 Torino players in the starting 11, and Valentino Mazzola, the captain of the Torino team, served as the captain of the Italian national team.

Torino also won five Serie A titles in the 40s, including four consecutive league titles after the end of World War II, and overwhelmed their rivals Juventus.

However, providence made people, on May 4, 1949, when the Torino team returned home from the Latin Cup match against Benfica in Portugal, the plane crashed into the Supega mountain near the airport, and the "Supega Air Disaster" occurred that shocked Shijie football. The crash wiped out the Torino team, which has not been able to recover since, and more importantly, Italy also lost its football elite, with all nine players playing for Torino tragically killed, resulting in the early elimination of the Italian national team from the 1950 Shijie Cup. Since then, the Italian team has entered a "dark age", and Italian football has lost a dynasty team.

Since then, Juventus, who have been pressed by Torino, took the opportunity to re-emerge, and the devastated Torino team sank, although there was a brief revival after that, but the long-term poverty and weakness made the "Red Bull" never able to turn over.

This season's Torino sent away Uruguayan Prince Enzo Francisco in the summer, bought African star Abedi Bailey from Marseille, who were relegated due to match-fixing, brought in striker RizTeli from Roma (who later went to Bayern Munich for two years), and Sirenzi, who scored 17 Serie A goals last season, is not bad on the cards.

In this game, Fiorentina who visited Turin not only lacked the main scorer Batistuta, but also midfielders Effenberg and Di Biagio were also suspended due to the accumulation of yellow cards, and the roof leak happened to rain overnight, and the left full-back Lanna suffered a slight injury the day before the game and had to miss the game against the Torino team.

The absence of a number of big players has left Ranieri distressed, and also gave the Torino team a glimmer of hope to score points on the Purple Lily.

From the beginning of the game, Fiorentina, who lacked major generals, was unable to speak in the face of the turtle shell made in Torino, Vieri, who replaced Barty, did not have the power of the rampaging "human tank" in later generations, Inzaghi was also drowned in the "crowd tactics" of the Torino team, and the absence of Effenberg and Di Biagio greatly weakened Fiorentina's control in the midfield......

In the 67th minute, Torino took advantage of a mistake in Fiorentina's midfield pass to play a quick counter-attack, Riztri won the ball and shook off Toldo before a light right-footed push to score the only goal of the game, and Fiorentina lost 1-0 away.

After this game, Fiorentina is second with 10 wins, 2 draws and 3 losses with 32 points, because in another game at the same time, Juventus and Parma, who had previously accumulated 31 points, met in this round, and finally Juventus won 3-1 at Parma's home stadium, thus successfully overtaking Fiorentina by two points and jumping to the top of Serie A.

But whether it was Fiorentina losing the top spot or Juventus regaining the top spot, none of this was published on the front pages of the major Italian sports newspapers the next day, because the paparazzi dug up an even more shocking piece of news:

Inter Milan changes hands! The son of an oil tycoon takes over the Nerazzurri! 》