The 20 Unsung Heroes Who Made Fiorentina’s History

When you tell the story of a hundred years of Fiorentina, the first names come almost by themselves. Antognoni, Hamrin, Julinho, De Sisti, Baggio, Batistuta, Rui Costa. The goals, the moments, the photographs that ended up as posters on bedroom walls.

But a football club doesn’t live on its stars alone.

It also lives on the player who chases an opponent for eighty yards. On the one who comes on when the game has turned ugly. On the one who plays full-back, holding midfielder, winger, or wherever he’s needed. On the one who rarely scores, but who once scored a goal Florence will never forget. On the ones who finish a match with a filthy shirt, their socks around their ankles, and almost no space in the headlines.

We call them gregari — the Italian word for the riders who work for the team leader — but it isn’t a demotion. It’s closer to a badge of honor.

For Fiorentina’s centenary we picked twenty of them. Not necessarily the best, and not the most important either. Certainly not the only ones. They are twenty players who, in very different eras, seem to say something about the spirit of this club: hard work, belonging, sacrifice, and that particular knack for being loved by Florence without ever having to wear the number 10.

Giuseppe Chiappella –
The Midfielder of the First Title

Long before “gregario” became a word in modern football, there was Beppe Chiappella. He joined Fiorentina in 1949 and became one of the key men in Fulvio Bernardini’s side that won the club’s first Italian title in 1955-56. A defensive-minded midfielder with sharp tactical intelligence and a fighter’s temperament, he could drop deep, cover, run the play and protect his teammates. He also wore the captain’s armband: a gregario, then, only in the most honorable sense of the word. The kind who makes the team better mainly by doing whatever needs doing.

Maurilio Prini –
The Winger Who Also Ran Backwards

That first title-winning Fiorentina had Virgili’s goals, Montuori’s talent and a side Bernardini had balanced almost perfectly. Maurilio Prini was one of its least celebrated but most valuable men. A winger, a Florentine from Sieci, he made 26 appearances and scored six goals in that 1955-56 season. And when Fiorentina went all the way to the European Cup final the following year, one of the heaviest goals was his: the one in Belgrade, three minutes from time, in the first leg of the semifinal against Red Star. Even gregari, now and then, decide history.

Andrea Orlandini –
Birillo, One of Our Own

Florentine, a holding midfielder, one of those players who seem to belong naturally to the shirt they wear. Andrea “Birillo” Orlandini had two spells in purple and came back to Florence in 1977 to end his career right there. He was a man of running, marking and substance, the kind who in Seventies football could be sent to deal with the opposition’s best player without much explanation: with Italy he once drew Johan Cruyff. His final season was 1981-82, the Fiorentina that came within a whisker of the title. He played little, four matches, but he was there. That too, in the end, is what belonging to a story means.

Mario Faccenda –
Fiorentina Without Frills

Mario Faccenda belongs to a different Fiorentina, the one of the Eighties and early Nineties, when football was still made of man-marking, hard tackles and matches you had to survive before you could play them. A rugged, no-nonsense defender with little interest in the beauty of the gesture, he is the perfect example of a category that has nearly vanished from the modern game: the player who didn’t need to be elegant to be useful. And Florence, a city capable of falling for someone simply because he never pulls his leg out of a challenge, has always understood that kind of footballer.

Beppe Iachini –
“Get Stuck In for Us”

Some chants describe a player better than any statistic. For Beppe Iachini, the Fiesole end had one that left no doubt: “Picchia per noi Beppe Iachini” — get stuck in for us. He arrived in 1989 as the midfielder assigned to go and pick up the most technical player in the opposition. He ran, he marked, he tackled. Fierce but fair, serious in training and generous on the pitch. With that Fiorentina he would also reach the 1990 UEFA Cup final. Years later he would come back to Florence as a manager, but for a generation of supporters he will always be that long-haired midfielder who looked willing to keep running until somebody turned the floodlights off.

Alberto Di Chiara –
Up and Down That Flank

When he arrived in Florence in 1986 he was a winger. Then football changed his position, and he changed the way the position was played. Alberto Di Chiara had pace, speed, dribbling and delivery: starting from full-back he could suddenly turn into an extra forward. Five seasons, 172 appearances and 13 goals in purple, across Fiorentina sides very different from one another, up to the 1990 UEFA Cup final against Juventus. He never needed to stop and decide whether to attack or defend. He did both. Often on the same run.

Stefano Carobbi –
The Boy Who Became Captain

Florentine, a Fiorentina youth product, a left-back from the days when full-backs were asked first to defend and then, if possible, to start running again. Stefano Carobbi is one of those names that doesn’t need a single great feat to earn a place on this list. His is a story of belonging. He came up through the academy, made the first team, left, and came back. In the 1992-93 season he also wore the captain’s armband. He couldn’t prevent the crushing relegation that followed, but some bonds aren’t erased even by the worst seasons.

Sandro Cois –
He Ran So Rui Costa Could Invent

If we had to explain what we mean by gregario using one player from the Nineties, we would probably pick Sandro Cois. He arrived in 1994 and stayed until 2002. Around him were Batistuta, Rui Costa, Toldo, Edmundo, Chiesa. And then there was him. He ran, won the ball back, closed the gaps, started again. Eight seasons and 175 Serie A appearances in purple, becoming the necessary counterweight to everyone else’s talent. He won the Coppa Italia and the 1996 Supercoppa and even made it to the 1998 World Cup. He wasn’t the name you bought on the back of a shirt. He was the one who made the team work.

Anselmo Robbiati –
Spadino, the Man for the Moment

Anselmo Robbiati, or simply Spadino to Florence, arrived in the hardest summer of all: 1993, with Fiorentina freshly dropped into Serie B. And he started by scoring. Small, technical, quick, able to accept the bench and then come on and change a game. That may be his truest portrait: not the superstar, but the man you want alongside you when a season is long and you never know who will have to win you the next Sunday. Under Ranieri he lived through the climb back, then the Batistuta and Rui Costa years. One of those players Florence ended up calling by a nickname, which is almost always the final proof of affection.

Francesco Baiano –
Running Next to Batistuta

Calling Ciccio Baiano a gregario might seem almost unfair. He was good, he scored, and he came to Florence after starring in Zeman’s Foggia. But next to Batistuta he knew how to reinvent himself. Second striker, constant movement, quickness, space opened up for the Argentine center-forward. Ranieri’s Fiorentina had the goals of the Lion King, but behind many of those goals was the work of the man running beside him. Baiano did it without losing his own identity. And perhaps the most valuable gregario is exactly the one with enough talent to demand more of the light, who understands that the team comes first.

Stefano Borgonovo –
The B2 That Made Florence Dream

Stefano Borgonovo may not have been a gregario at all. But he has to be on this list, because he shows perfectly how huge a player can become while playing next to someone destined to be remembered as an all-time great. In the 1988-89 Fiorentina the B2 was born: Baggio-Borgonovo. One invented, the other attacked the space and scored. Together they made Florence fall in love. Many years later, when Borgonovo began his fight against ALS, Baggio came back to his side and called him a “modern hero.” By then football had already become something infinitely larger than football.

Giacomo Banchelli –
When You Had to Climb Back

Some players are remembered for taking part in the wins. Others because they were there when it all had to be rebuilt. Giacomo Banchelli belongs to the second group. Florentine, a forward, he was part of the Claudio Ranieri side that in 1993-94 had to face Serie B after one of the most traumatic relegations in the club’s history. That team had Batistuta, of course, but it also needed men willing to play on grounds nobody had pictured only a few months earlier. Fiorentina won the league and went straight back up. Comebacks need their gregari too.

Enrico Fantini –
Two Goals to Come Home

If there is one feat capable of turning a gregario into the outright star for a few days, Enrico Fantini lived it in June 2004. Fiorentina, risen from the rubble of bankruptcy, had to get past Perugia in the play-off to return to Serie A. In the first leg, in Umbria, Fantini scored: 1-0. In the return, in front of more than thirty thousand people at the Franchi, Fantini scored again. Two matches, two goals. The second was effectively the ticket back to where Florence felt it belonged. He won’t be remembered among the great purple goalscorers. But when a city has to come home, somebody has to open the door.

Mauro Bressan –
One Night, One Flight, Forever

On November 2, 1999, Barcelona came to the Franchi. On the pitch were Rui Costa, Figo, Rivaldo, Guardiola, Kluivert, Luis Enrique. Batistuta was out. The one who took the night, though, was Mauro Bressan. A cleared ball climbed high outside the box. Bressan didn’t wait for it: he set himself and struck it with an overhead kick from a nearly absurd distance. The ball drew an arc and dropped in under the crossbar. One of the finest goals in Champions League history. Bressan was not the player who was supposed to end up on the covers that night. And that is exactly why the goal is still so beautiful. For one instant, the gregario flew higher than anyone.

Lorenzo Amoruso –
The Defender Who Scored in a Final

He arrived in 1995 and found a Fiorentina that had finally started thinking big again. Lorenzo Amoruso was physical strength, personality and marking, but also a defender who could make himself felt in the opposition box. The moment that hands him to purple memory came on May 18, 1996, the second leg of the Coppa Italia final against Atalanta. Fiorentina had won the first leg 1-0; in Bergamo it was Amoruso who opened the scoring, before Batistuta settled it for good. That cup came back to Florence after twenty-one years. The first blow of the decisive night was struck by a defender.

Moreno Torricelli –
Geppetto Never Stopped Running

His story seemed already written somewhere else: from a carpenter’s bench to Juventus, all the way to the Champions League. Then in 1998 Moreno Torricelli followed Trapattoni to Florence and started running as if he had won nothing at all. Full-back, marker, a man for the battle. In his first season Fiorentina were winter champions and finished third, qualifying for the Champions League. He stayed four years, through the great European dream and then the slow collapse of the club, but he still added the 2001 Coppa Italia to the purple cabinet. That was Torricelli: you could change his team, his stadium and his target. He would run anyway.

Angelo Di Livio –
Staying

With Angelo Di Livio you could bring up the Champions League, the runs down the flank, the nickname “Soldatino,” the little soldier. But to explain what he meant to Florence, one word is enough: staying. In the summer of 2002 Fiorentina went bankrupt and ceased to exist. Di Livio came from a career at the very top and had just played a World Cup with Italy. He could have gone anywhere. Instead he started again in Serie C2 with Florentia Viola. Provincial grounds, a club to rebuild, and the armband. Years later he would say he never regretted that choice. Some players become symbols for the trophies they lift. Di Livio became one by going down a division.

Jörg Heinrich –
Trapattoni’s German

He arrived in the summer of 1998 from Borussia Dortmund with a Champions League already won, and slotted into Trapattoni’s Fiorentina without asking to be a star. Jörg Heinrich could play out wide, deeper, or in midfield: strength, running, tactical discipline. In his first season he made 31 league appearances and scored three goals; that Fiorentina dreamed of the title, finished winter champions and reached the Champions League. The following year he lived the great European nights alongside Rui Costa, Batistuta and the rest. A foreign player who stayed only two seasons, yet was perfectly recognizable inside that team: fewer spotlights, a great many miles.

Martin Jørgensen –
Wherever He Was Needed

Some players make the position on the team sheet look like a detail. Martin Jørgensen was one of them. He arrived in 2004, with Fiorentina freshly back in Serie A, and stayed until January 2010. Wide man, midfielder, attacking player and, when it was needed, even right-back. Under Prandelli he was one of the faces of a Fiorentina back in Europe for good, through the UEFA Cup and the Champions League. In purple he put together 182 appearances and 17 goals. His value lay above all in the question he always seemed to answer the same way: “Where am I needed?” There.

Rolando Mandragora –
The Gregario Who Learned to Score

And so we reach the Fiorentina of today. Rolando Mandragora has never been the player you build a season’s cover around. He has been, though, the one managers kept using: midfield, balance, pressure, second balls, late runs. And as the years went by the goals came too. Plenty of them. Through Fiorentina’s European seasons he became an almost permanent presence, going on to set records in UEFA competitions in the purple shirt. In February 2026, with a superb free kick against Jagiellonia, he became Fiorentina’s all-time leading scorer in the Conference League. A strange and lovely fate: the gregario who, by carrying on being a gregario, ended up in the record books.

And Everyone We Left Out

Twenty names for a hundred years is far too few. We know.

Players are missing that someone would have put first. Carnasciali, Pasqual, Ujfaluši, Donadel and many more. Someone will find Baiano too good to be called a gregario. Someone else will say Borgonovo was a great. Others will bring up a forgotten full-back from the Seventies, or the midfielder only they and five thousand other Fiesole season-ticket holders remember.

And that’s exactly as it should be.

Because a team isn’t only the eleven that make it into the books. It’s also the players each supporter, for reasons that are often impossible to explain, ends up growing fond of.

The stars gave Fiorentina the moments we remember. But for a hundred years, next to them, somebody ran, marked, covered, chased and started over.

This time we wanted to remember them.