Coach Paolo Vanoli held a press conference following Fiorentina’s draw with Inter at the Stadio Franchi on matchday 30 of the 2025/26 Serie A season.

“I want to congratulate the players. We got off to a tough start as we conceded a goal after just 39 seconds against a very good team that are fighting for the league title. We were good at staying focused despite the difficulties throughout the match and getting back to what our original plan for the match was. To me that was the key to the team’s growth. Despite these improvements, conceding a goal after just 39 seconds as was the case tonight is unacceptable. But they put on a great performance.

“We were coming off five games in 14 days. So I want to congratulate the players and every staff member because we were up against a very physical team that had a whole week to prepare for this match. I believe we did very well in the second half, as well as in some parts of the first; we had some chances to equalize in the first as well. We need to be more clinical and capitalize on our opportunities.”

This Fiorentina is more convincing than what we previously saw. Is it enough to avoid relegation?

“When you get a new coach, you always think that that will be the silver bullet, that everything will change. However, creating a new mentality requires time. We’ve constantly been building this new mentality, one brick at a time, although it was often not noticed from the outside. In Udine we we’d run out of psycho-physical energy, whereas tonight we really did well in this respect too. However, we mustn’t let our guard down. After the break we will be up against Verona and today they were a tough opponent for Atalanta. There is nothing to be taken for granted about the past eight games. Our true hope of avoiding relegation is to truly play football, and that’s exactly what we did tonight.

“It’s a shame that Moise [Kean] didn’t score, because goals are very important for forwards. I’m happy with [Nicolo] Fagioli’s performance, although he needs to be more accurate in his shots from outside the box. There are many things that need to be improved, but we’ll use this international break to recover, take stock and then prepare effectively for our game against Verona.”