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How Fiorentina can get the best out of Moise Kean

There are numerous reasons for Fiorentina’s collapse from European contender to Serie A’s most disappointing club but Moise Kean is near the top of the list. In his debut Viola campaign, he became Italy’s scariest striker. His sophomore effort, however, saw him underperform his xG by the largest margin in the league. A calf/ankle issue that he carried all year (and eventually sidelined him for the final month and a half) and the team’s general assness were the primary culprits. I’d argue that basic regression to the mean after an all-timer of a season was a big part of it too.

In just 2 seasons, we’ve gotten the full Moose spectrum. Fabio Paratici’s first job is to weigh the odds of Fabio Grosso returning Kean to something approaching his best versus the financial benefit of selling the Azzurri number 9. Unsurprisingly, Grosso reportedly wants to keep him and has initiated talks with the player’s agent to convince him to stay. Now it’s up to the mister and Paratici to create an environment for Kean to rediscover his best. Like any jackass who’s watching from the outside, I’ve got some opinions on how to do that.

1. The wingers stay on the wings

Fiorentina’s lack of width under Stefano Pioli was astonishing. I’ve seen people blame the formation (3-4-2-1 or 3-5-2) but that has little to do with it: plenty of teams playing those shapes get width in the final third. Raffaele Palladino accomplished that the previous season, in fact, with some clever tactical moves. Pioli’s problem was the overall system, which packed everyone into the middle and allowed opponents to double- or triple-mark Kean without any Fiorentina players exploiting the wings.

Palladino’s solution the previous season was simple: when Fiorentina had the ball, Robin Gosens got high and wide without having to worry about helping build moves from deep because Edoardo Bove or Yacine Adli handled that; on the other side, Dodô started deeper, giving him plenty of space to build up a head of steam when the opposing leftback stayed narrow to help with Kean. Under Pioli, though, Gosens was ordered to stay inside to help with the buildup and protect against breaks down the wing, while Dodô also stayed deep to carry the ball forward. Cher Ndour occasionally tried to stretch things but his defensive brief made that difficult. The result was a narrow, gummy mess that allowed opponents to keep Kean surrounded at all times.

Sassuolo has one of the strongest tactical identities in Italy. Its hallmark since breaking into Serie A has outstanding wingers who start wide and then drive inside. Grosso’s Neroverdi were more transitional than previous editions but he didn’t change the underlying principles much. Domenico Berardi and especially Armand Laurienté hugged the touchlines, forcing opponents to defend the full width of the pitch at all times. I expect Grosso to bring those principles to Florence.

Fiorentina has wingers but none who command the respect of Berardi, Laurienté, and Cristian Volpato. That’s not something Grosso can fix, of course; that’s Paratici’s job. What Grosso can do is ensure that the wingers stretch the pitch. Again, it’s nothing to do with the nominal formation. Albert Guðmundsson interprets the job of winger as “wander around the center circle.” Formations don’t win games. Players do. And Grosso’s job is to put them in the right places to bring out their best.

2. A stubborn mid-block

A low block is often as much about attacking as defending. By sitting off, a team creates space over the top. It’s why Palladino’s Fiorentina was amazing against big teams and historically bad against small ones. Talking about a deep defense as purely negative is reductive; Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan, for instance, led Serie A in scoring. In the current tactical milieu, teams are so good at pressing that possession is often synonymous with vulnerability.

That space over the top is where Kean thrives. His unreal combination of speed and strength means he can both get in behind and hold off defenders even when they run with him. His movement in tight spaces isn’t as impressive and he isn’t consistent enough technically to make space against a settled defense, so getting the best out of him usually means maximizing the space he has over the top. Pressing high eliminates that space. Sitting deeper creates it.

Because these things are always connected, it’s worth mentioning here that Kean doesn’t do much pressing. He spends all of his energy on those sprints in behind instead. Requiring him to close down opposing centerbacks like demon would detract from his predatory best. That’s not to say he’s lazy—he scored a number of goals by knicking the ball off defenders in 2024-2025—but expecting him trigger the team’s press at the first line instead of allowing him to focus on working the channels makes zero sense.

3. Intelligent verticality

Here’s where it starts getting tricky. Since Kean’s usually lurking on the shoulder of the last defender, he’s prone to vanishing if he can’t get the ball. Some of that is his insistence on going over the top rather than checking to but regardless, he’s usually all alone when the ball reaches him. It worked under Palladino because Moise was on an all-time heater but expecting him to maintain that form for another entire season is probably folly. What Grosso can do, though, is improve his support.

Kean’s attacking partners last year left much to be desired. Roberto Piccoli occupied the same spaces, rendering them both useless. Albert Guðmundsson always checked to the ball. Edin Džeko couldn’t run. The wingbacks started so deep they couldn’t get forward to link up with him. By the time Paolo Vanoli switched to a system with wingers, Kean was already hurt and in a funk. If he’d had somebody else with him in the final third more often, it would’ve taken some of the pressure off him.

And he felt that pressure. His refusal to pass, even when it meant running into multiple defenders, was almost as infuriating as those rare times when he did give the ball up to a teammate who promptly lost it instead. He was trying to take everything on his shoulders and couldn’t carry the load. That’s fine. There are maybe, what, 3 strikers on earth at any given moment who can create a coherent attack without help. Kean doesn’t have to be one of them to be an effective presence.

What that means for Grosso is finding a way to get bodies forward. I already mentioned how holding the width in the final third will make Kean’s life easier, but having another couple players in the box should help too. Marco Brescianini and Giovanni Fabbian could help, as could Kristian Thorstvedt or Luca Koleosho, who specialize in lungbusting runs from deep. Having another target in the penalty area would reduce the attention defenses can pay Kean. If those players demonstrate that they can actually do something with the ball, Moise might even become a bit less selfish, which would in turn make things easier for him.

4. Finding somebody else who can score

I’m working on a big spreadsheet piece that’ll crunch some numbers here but here’s the tl;dr spoiler: teams rely less and less every year on a single player to shoulder the scoring load. Fiorentina gave us a great look at why over the past 2 years. In 2024-2025, Kean was the best striker in Italy, creating his own chances and finishing them at an unsustainable rate. In 2025-2026, he was injured, absent, and just straight up played worse. Tying the fortunes of a team to a single player creates wild season-to-season variance and isn’t a good foundation for consistent success.

Paratici and Grosso’s task is to ensure that Fiorentina doesn’t disintegrate when the Moose doesn’t have the juice. The non-Kean forwards—Guðmundsson, Piccoli, Džeko, Harrison, Solomon—scored 12 combined goals in Serie A, good for one every 502 minutes. That execrable rate wasn’t entirely on them (the most goal-averse attacking context imaginable matters) but a lot of it was. As a result, Fiorentina’s attack remained wholly Kean-centric even though he was far from his best.

The real problem here is that relying on a monolithic talent creates a feedback loop: the main guy gets overconfident (i.e. Dušan Vlahović) or breaks down physically (i.e. Franck Ribery), the other players get so used to deferring that they stagnate or get worse, the rest of the team ignores them and forces the ball to the only reasonable scoring option, opponents realize there’s a single threat and cancel it out, the main guy gets frustrated at all the attention, the atmosphere gets toxic.

Beyond the tactical issues of width and depth on the pitch, having another goal threat means defenses can’t key on Kean exclusively. Without the Eye of Sauron bearing down on him at all times, he’ll have more space, both literal and figurative, to operate. Even someone as mentally tough as Moise will feel the pressure of carrying a team alone; having a sidekick, an Aragorn to charge the Black Gates as a distraction while you sneak into Orodruin, makes all the difference. Instead of the King of Gondor, though, Fiorentina’s been relying on Gamling or Damrod, which is a very dorky way of saying that there isn’t enough talent elsewhere.

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