Florence is the Perfect Home for Moise Kean Following Explosive Start to Life at Fiorentina

Moise Kean ran down the left-hand channel following David De Gea’s long punt up the pitch from a Hellas Verona corner.

Faced with Verona defender Reda Belahyane in a one-vs-one, the striker motored past the Moroccan before cutting inside. Belahyane went for physicality in an attempt to dispossess his opponent, yet the end result was the defender lying in a heap on the floor. Fiorentina’s No 20 took aim and angled a shot with his right foot into the bottom corner of Lorenzo Montipo’s goal.

It was Kean’s hat-trick and he’d left the best of the three until last.

His form has propelled his side to the dizzying heights of third in a tightly-congested Serie A table, something few would’ve expected when the season kicked off.

Of course, it’s still early days in the campaign – we’re just under a third of the way through – but Raffaele Palladino is surpassing all expectations at this stage, and expectations weren’t all that high at the offset.

It had been a low-key summer from La Viola. The club had lost a second consecutive Europa League Conference Final, with the Olympiakos defeat even more bitter than the first against West Ham. 

Vincenzo Italiano departed for Bologna, replacing the Juventus-bound Thiago Motta. Palladino had impressed with Monza, and most saw him as a like-for-like replacement for Italiano in terms of philosophy.

Just like Federico Bernadeschi, Federico Chiesa and Dusan Vlahovic before him, Nico Gonzalez left for Juventus in the dying days of the transfer window. The Argentine had arguably been the club’s star man over the past two seasons, and his departure left Fiorentina scrambling for a replacement. 

In came Albert Gudmundsson from Genoa, alongside Robin Gosens (Union Berlin), Danilo Cataldi (Lazio) and Edoardo Bove (Roma).

But it was the signing made at the beginning of July that has made the biggest impact for Palladino.

Kean was signed for €13m, plus bonuses, from Juve and it was generally assumed the move south to Florence was for the best. Clearly a player with immense talent, Kean had struggled in his final season in Turin, scoring zero league goals from 19 outings. In fact, Kean failed to score a single goal in any competition for The Old Lady last season. 

Kean’s career wasn’t panning out the way most envisioned when he initially burst onto the scene as a 17-year-old. Slowly introduced into Juve’s first team by Max Allegri towards the end of 2016-17, Kean scored his first Serie A goal on the final day of the season, the winner against Bologna.

Most thought it was to be the first of many. It wasn’t.

Kean was sent on loan to newly-promoted Verona in 2017-18 to gain greater Serie A experience, but could only manage four goals as the Veneto side went straight back down.

His return to Juve saw him struggle to break into a team that now contained Cristiano Ronaldo. Six goals in just over 500 minutes of Serie A football wasn’t a bad return for a player of his age, yet the sheer competition in Turin meant a departure was inevitable. 

Kean’s Everton move was a disaster and after a brief interlude at Paris Saint-Germain, where he had the most productive season of his career, he returned to Turin yet again in the summer of 2021.

By then, Juventus were a very different club to the one he’d left, and Kean struggled in Allegri’s minimalist second era. He was behind Vlahovic in the pecking order for the most part and scored only 11 league goals in three years.

Now, for the first time in his career, the 24-year-old is at the centre of a team, with Kean Palladino’s undisputed number one choice in attack. The move to Fiorentina made perfect sense, Kean needed a place where he could lead the line, and La Viola needed a true goalscorer after cycling through multiple failures since Vlahovic departed for Juve in January 2022.

Yet the omens weren’t especially good just days after signing. Kean was partaking in a game with kids in which the aim was to hit balls at an inflatable dartboard. Kean took two attempts, and both hit the bottom of the board. The footage went viral amid relentless mocking from fans of his former clubs. But no one is laughing now.

Kean’s hat-trick means he’s currently second to Atalanta’s Mateo Retegui in the Capocannoniere ranking with eight goals, one ahead of Inter’s Marcus Thuram. 

After a slow start to life in purple, Kean has scored six goals in his last three games. Palladino never had any doubts, however, “I’d wanted him already at Monza,” he said after the Verona game. “He has everything to be a top striker and is working well.”

Kean could be finally set to fulfil the potential most predicted years ago. Now in the perfect set-up in Tuscany, Fiorentina and Kean could elevate one another to great heights. “I return home with a smile, something that was missing a little. To have people who want me to do well, there’s no better thing,” Kean told La Gazzetta dello Sport recently.

Two-and-a-half years after Vlahovic left, La Viola finally have an adequate replacement, one who — for a change — made the opposite journey.