Fabiano Parisi to Fiorentina:

Fiorentina last season played in sixty different matches without considering friendlies, it was a first time in a long time. They competed in two finals, in the Conference League and Coppa Italia, they lost both unfortunately - because their performances deserved at least one trophy. At the same time in Serie A it was a troubled season. Being the most ball dominant team in the league, they had problem scoring and not conceding with 53 goals scored from 55 xG and 43 goals conceded from 43.4 xG according to FBREF. After the finals a constant theme of the season returned once again, that Fiorentina was too aggressive, without a proper equilibrium, playing a defensive line that was too high.

That’s not something Fiorentina should be accused of doing because Italiano - their manager - gave them a totally new dimension after years of anonimity. Two seasons ago they qualified for European competitions after years and then came to compete for two trophies. His confirmation in the summer - amid Napoli interests according to Italian media - was an important demonstration of will by Commisso, another one if you want after in January he decided to keep both Amrabat and Nico González, for what probably would have been a combined 70 million euros. Further more Fiorentina is not particularly high on the pitch given Serie A average:

They simply happen to not have the right personnel and habit of playing so many games in a so congested schedule to cope with the really demanding Italiano’s play style. But this is still interesting, because you see that Empoli - Parisi’s ex-team - was the team with lowest average line in Serie A. Parisi will asked to adapt to something really different, indeed Empoli is the team that scored the lowest in similarity to Fiorentina’s play style in my model, and it happens to be because of their out of possession phase. But Empoli did something last season that could make Parisi transition easier, and maybe make captain Biraghi play less on the left side of the defense than last season:

If we adjust for opponents touches, Empoli was the fifth team in Serie A to make use of the offside rule to punish opponents while Fiorentina was the first. That single element could be very important for Parisi. He’s used to move in certain coherent way with the team, but he’s a really fast, aware of what happens and sacrificing full-back. Look at this compilation:

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You can see he track the opponents runs, runs to recover players that have some advantage on him and teammates. He’s able to cover an high line, and defend on the back foot, so this could be a first tile in the defensive mosaic Fiorentina needs to create to keep growing on the pitch, and creates a succession plan for Biraghi since Parisi last season was the second player born after 2000 for minutes played in Serie A. If we then watch his defensive heatmap adjusted for opponents possession we can see he really defended near his box - of course he did - but he also did something in the opponents box, highlighting he can do that too in a team which is more ball and pitch dominant.

And on the ball he’s good too.

He’s a really good ball carrier in whatever way you want for Serie A standard, where he doesn’t excel is in bringing the ball into the final third of the pitch and in the opponent’s box, that’s clear to see in his progressive carries maps:

Even tough for now he’s not succeeding in bringing the ball into the box, he’s a presence in the offensive half. Again with a heatmap we can see it, in this case we adjust his actions for the amount of touches made by Empoli in every square, and the result shows how much Parisi was a presence for Empoli:

Fiorentina bought themselves a gem, he needs to be still developed, polished and most importantly used. Going to Fiorentina will be surely a different challenge, Fiorentina sixty game season it difficult to replicate, and Parisi came into the team to replace Terzic who accumulated a little more than 1600 minutes last season for La Viola. For this reason Parisi is called to successfully play at least 1500 minutes next season in this new environment given he missed the 3000 minutes mark for half a game last season in Empoli. In any case Fiorentina and his fans have reasons to think he can do it and bring something good to the table.