![]() ![]() On the current roster, I see three candidates for this unbelievably niche job: Luca Ranieri, Alfred Duncan, and Christian Kouamé. I also feel like there usually needs to be a minimum tenure of 3 years, but that’s negotiable. Finally, being pretty cool off the pitch is a big bonus. ![]() It’s also important not to be too good, but not so hapless that the player becomes a meme (Nenad Tomović, Lorenzo Venuti). Fullbacks and defensive midfielders are better, preferably ones who can fill in at more than one position. What does it take to be this kind of role player? It’s very difficult to be an attacking player, for one thing, and fit the mold Khouma Babacar is probably the closest thing, but he’s too beloved in Florence. During Stefano Pioli/Beppe Iachini years, Bryan Dabo and Federico Ceccherini filled the role. Those awful years under Šiniša Mihajlović and Delio Rossi were too depressing for fun role players, but the rise of Vincenzo Montella’s first spell offered the incompparable Marvin Compper, José María Basanta, Milan Badelj, and Carlos Sánchez. Besides Gobbi, the Prandelli era boasted Cesare Natali and Martin Jørgensen. He’s my Platonic ideal: the uncelebrated role player, the glue that holds the side together, the smaller cog in the machine.įiorentina’s had any number over the years. He never complained, did his job, filled in all over the pitch, and seemed like a pretty decent guy off it. I have no idea why I’ve always loved Gobbi so much, but I do. The Gobbi incident is about 6 minutes into the video. Gobbi’s most memorable moment with Fiorentina was probably the straight red card he earned in the Champions League for standing near Arjen Robben, who went down like he’d been poleaxed had Tom Henning Øvrebo not cocked that up, Miroslav Klose likely never would’ve scored that miles offside “winner” and the Viola might well have progressed. He was a solid but almost hilariously unspectacular player who earned a 14-minute cameo in his sole cap for Italy in an experimental friendly in 2006 that also featured luminaries luminaries such as Andrea Carracciolo (who even now is probably linked to Fiorentina’s vacancy up top). He joined Fiorentina aged 26 from Cagliari for about €4.3 million and departed for Parma on a Bosman, eventually retiring in 2019 and moving into the broadcasting booth for DAZN. Did I mention that he wore a mask sometimes? Photo by Luca Ghidoni/Getty Imagesįor those of you who don’t remember, Gobbi was a mediocre utility player, usually used at leftback but capable in central midfield or even on the wing. For example, I’ve never pretended that Massimo Gobbi wasn’t one of my favorite Fiorentina players of all time, for reasons that nobody else can possibly comprehend because they follow no laws of external logic. Maybe that’s why, while most people are attracted to prolific strikers or magical playmakers, I’ve always loved the limited, mildly eccentric players that fit around them. As a result, I’ve always been that kind of player: never the most technical or the most athletic, but usually useful, even at my advanced age, because I know my job and stick to it. It didn’t make anyone like me, but it made them accept me a little bit, and I fully internalized that doing the dirty work was my job on the field. I embraced man-marking the best opponent, removing him from the game, so that my teammates could do the fun stuff like dribbling and shooting. ![]() And because I had a need to make the other kids like me that I couldn’t fulfill through my social interactions, I learned that I could become indispensable by how I played.Īs a soccer player, that meant I alternated between centerback, sweeper, and defensive midfield. I was, fortunately, a pretty good athlete, so I played on a lot of different teams for my school. Soccer, American football, basketball, baseball, whatever: physical activity was the only way I was able to relate to other kids. The only time I had any real social interaction with my peers was when we played sports. The only burden greater than my unsociability was my desire to be liked, which, as you’d expect, meant that I was constantly, desperately sad. I didn’t talk to other students, not because I thought I was better, but because I was so conversationally bad that I hadn’t even the foggiest idea of how to be an acquaintance, much less a friend. I spent my spare time at school reading my history textbooks cover to cover instead of interacting with my classmates. ![]()
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