Forza Italian Football takes a brief look at this season’s Serie A new boys who will be hoping to emulate the achievements of Hellas Verona and Sassuolo by remaining in Serie A come this time next year.
Empoli have been improving in recent seasons, losing to Livorno in the playoffs in 2013, before securing their spot in Serie A by virtue of finishing runners-up to Palermo, with a run of three straight wins from the end of May.
A relatively small club based a little over 20 miles outside Florence, and known more as a railway change point than a town in and of itself, Empoli’s recent history has been the most successful spell of all time.
Having never been in Serie A before 1986, 2014/15 will mark the Azzurri’s fifth stint in the top flight – though perhaps indicative of the club’s stature, the longest of those spells has been only three seasons.
A side with a mixture of youth and experience will be sure to delight fans as some familiar faces return to Serie A, too. The bald pate of Massimo Maccarone is likely to remain with the club, tying up his deal from Sampdoria for a third season. Francesco Tavano hit 100 goals for Empoli during the last campaign, and ended up top scorer with 20.
The club have re-signed young winger Simone Verdi from Torino, too, so the forward line should look very familiar to anyone who followed them last season.
Furthering the excitement of those forwards, Mauricio Sarri has added two youngsters from Udinese to help in their goal-getting. Emanuele Rovini, an Italy U19 international, and the Uruguayan Rodrigo Aguirre, will both feature for Empoli. At the other end, goalkeeper Luigi Sepe has arrived from Napoli.
With season ticket uptake recently passing last season’s (the club averaged around 4,400 in Serie B) the Stadio Carlo Castellani will have to retain the same reputation as a fortress that it held last year. The Tuscans home record was second only to Siena, with 43 of their 72 points coming at home (60%); those wins came courtesy of scoring goals – so the strikers have that job to do – with only Modena’s 41 surpassing the Azzurri’s 36 in 21 home games.
It will be interesting to see if Sarri continues to play both Tavano and Maccarone in Serie A; the twin pairing generally sat ahead of Simone Verdi in a 4-3-1-2 formation last season, but Serie A defences pose very different problems to those a division below, so the addition of a couple of youngsters (Aguirre, in particular, is an exciting acquisition) may lighten the load on the veterans if he continues in that vein.
With Verdi being such a creative spark, the deeper-lying role allows him the freedom that his ‘Verdinho’ nickname implies he deserves.
The return of the town of Empoli means that, curiously, Chievo Verona have a rival in the Flying Donkey stakes. Empoli lights its Easter fireworks in Piazza Farinata following a ‘flight’ from a papier-maché winged donkey – a recent concession to health and safety, as the original metal animal still resides in a local museum.
Can They Stay Up? All the focus is on the forward line and, following Sassuolo’s example last season, scoring goals can keep a team in Serie A. If Tavano and Maccarone, or Aguirre and Rovini, are able to do that there’s n0 reason why not.
