Fiorentina secured a 1-0 victory over SPAL on Sunday afternoon to ensured Giuseppe Iachini won his first match at the Stadio Artemio Franchi as Viola boss – and Iachini spoke of his pride at giving the fans a long-awaited home win when he faced the media after the game.
“It’s doubly satisfying because this was my first match at the Franchi and it comes after a tough period – the fans haven’t been able to celebrate a win here in a long time,” said Iachini in his post-match press conference. “There are no easy games in Serie A. Let’s not forget that SPAL won 2-1 at Torino a few weeks ago and they beat Lazio too. They’re a very good side when they play on the break away from home.”
Iachini acknowledged that there is plenty of work still to do for Fiorentina – but stressed that there were positives to take from the narrow win over SPAL.
“We showed good solidity,” he said. “Of course, we need to improve our passing and possession game and we need to be more precise and reduce the number of mistakes we’re making, but we created chances – particularly in the second half. We’ll build on those and look to improve.”
The Fiorentina boss made it clear that there will be no quick fixes for the team after a difficult start to the season.
“I’ve been here for 12 days,” he said. “I said at the start that I don’t have a magic wand, but I think that we’ve looked solid in the first two games. We prepared for the game in a specific way and I think we were decent in the first 20 minutes, then we started to misplace a few passes and lost a bit of composure. We let a bit of fear creep in, which I something we spoke about in the pre-match press conference.”
New signing Patrick Cutrone was given 15 minutes to impress his new fans against SPAL, but Iachini was keen to point out that the striker still needs to reach optimum fitness.
“We will do some fitness tests with him tomorrow to see how many minutes he has in his legs,” he said. “Let’s not forget that he’s not played in a couple of months, so I’ll need to base my approach on those tests tomorrow. Then we’ll look at what he needs to do to get into peak condition.”
Published: Sun, 12 Jan 2020 19:03:00 +0100
Source: Fiorentina Official website en.violachannel.tv