Sunday.
Match day.
Genoa.
Stadio Luigi Ferraris.
Italy’s largest port, an industrial city in the northwest.
Since the Roman era, Genoa had been a military stronghold.
That industrial grit ran through the city’s football club too.
Genoa CFC played hard, physical football.
No star-studded lineup, but they’d held their ground in Serie A’s middle tier for years.
Last season they finished seventh.
This season they sat ninth, right behind Fiorentina.
Two points separated them.
A home win today would leapfrog them past the Viola in the standings.
For Fiorentina, this away match was non-negotiable.
Montella had told the squad flat out: three points or nothing.
A draw was unacceptable.
But the players knew the truth.
Genoa was a tough, stubborn side.
Earlier in the season, at home, Fiorentina had been held to a 1–1 draw.
Now, in Genoa’s house, taking all three points would be a battle.
On the bench, Ethan Cross could barely sit still.
The endless green of the pitch.
The roar of the crowd.
The stadium announcer’s voice over the PA.
All of it, familiar.
All of it, right in front of him again.
He’d been away from this stage for far too long.
“Ethan.
First time in a professional matchday squad.
Nervous?”
Joaquín, the winger beside him on the bench, grinned.
Ethan shook his head.
He wasn’t nervous.
He was electric.
The hunger to get on that pitch drowned out everything else.
Joaquín nodded.
“Relax.
The boys will wrap this up clean.”
“If we lock it down early, maybe you’ll even sneak a few minutes at the end.”
It was a nice thought.
Then the match started, and Fiorentina did not control it.
Neto in goal.
Rodríguez and Savić, the unbreakable center-back pair.
Marcos Alonso at left-back, captain Pasqual on the right.
Midfield: Aquilani, Pizarro, Badelj.
Up front: Mario Gomez at center-forward, Cuadrado on the right wing, and on the left, the newly arrived loan signing, Mohamed Salah.
Salah’s explosive wide play had caught Montella’s eye in training.
He’d thrown him straight into the starting eleven.
The plan was simple.
Cuadrado was already a blade on the right.
Now Salah gave them a second blade on the left.
Two knives cutting into the defense at once.
It should have been devastating.
And for the first few minutes, it was.
10th minute.
Aquilani fed the ball wide.
Salah took it, burst down the flank, beat his man, and whipped in a cross.
Mario Gomez rose and thundered a header.
The Genoa keeper made a stunning save, but the warning shot was fired.
Five minutes later, Fiorentina’s wide attack struck again.
This time it was Cuadrado on the right.
Genoa’s left-back tried to contain the Colombian international one-on-one.
Bad idea.
Cuadrado, Serie A’s dribbling king, shifted gears, blew past him, and cut the ball back from the byline.
This time Gomez didn’t miss.
He met it with a ferocious strike and buried it.
Fiorentina had the lead.
A dream start.
The Viola players and traveling fans celebrated.
This felt like the moment the match would settle.
Then everything flipped.
Genoa’s manager, Gian Piero Gasperini, had seen enough.
Fiorentina’s threat was purely on the wings.
He adjusted immediately.
He pulled his midfield line deeper, compressing the space Cuadrado and Salah needed to sprint into.
Then he assigned his full-backs to mark them tight and sent a defensive midfielder to double-team every time.
Now both wingers faced the same problem.
No room to run.
Two defenders every time they touched the ball.
Fiorentina’s attack went silent.
Montella, face grim, tried to adjust.
He shouted instructions from the touchline, shifting the focus from the flanks to the center, searching for a new breakthrough.
But breaking through the middle is never simple. Get faster updates on g.com.
Anyone who knows football understands the basic truth.
The center of the pitch is the most congested, most heavily defended space on the field.
You can’t just dribble through it.
You have to pass your way through, with precision.
Fiorentina’s midfield three had Badelj as the defensive shield.
Only Aquilani and Pizarro offered real creative passing.
Their distribution was solid by Serie A standards, but nowhere near elite.
Their attempts to thread balls through the middle came with a clear failure rate.
And every failure meant a turnover.
Every turnover gave Genoa a chance to strike.
43rd minute.
Genoa won the ball in midfield and broke.
Midfielder Stefano Sturaro drove forward and slid a through ball into the path of former Juventus striker Alessandro Matri.
Matri took it in stride and finished cleanly.
1–1.
The equalizer gutted Fiorentina.
They’d lost control.
And the goal ignited the home crowd.
Genoa’s players fed on the noise.
The momentum had swung hard against the Viola.
60th minute.
Genoa kept coming.
Matri received the ball in the box, turned, and fired.
Neto got a hand to it, but the shot was too heavy, too fast.
The ball still found the net.
1–2.
Fiorentina were behind.
In the away section, the traveling Fiorentina fans were shattered.
A match they’d felt certain of winning, and now their team was losing.
They’d come expecting three points from a critical away fixture, and the team was collapsing.
It was unbearable.
On the touchline, Montella’s stomach dropped.
This match had only one acceptable outcome.
There was no fallback.
If they were going to turn it around, they had to attack.
They had to throw everything forward.
And to attack, they needed better service from midfield.
To solve that problem, there was really only one option left.
Montella turned and looked at the bench.
At Ethan Cross.