Gli Azzurri | Part 5 | Club Record Transfers

A massive summer turnover had worked very nicely as Empoli FC sat pretty in the top half of Serie A heading into 2025. Any risk of relegation looked long gone, given we were 19 points clear of the dropzone.

However, that positivity was tempered by the threat of star man Tommaso Baldanzi leaving in January, given he wanted a move and the likes of Milan, RB Leipzig and West Ham were all interested. He put his name in the shop window, earning a 1-1 at Cremonese then laying on the opener and scoring the winner at home to Leece. He achieved his aim as Newcastle came in and we negotiated them up to the £50m we agreed with Baldanzi to smash the club’s record sale (previously £17m for Vicario to Spurs).

That meant a bit of a scramble to try and find a replacement on deadline day, which proved very challenging. But I eventually went for 19-year-old 6ft 4in Mainz striker Nelson Weiper, who’s a very different type of striker given he’s nine inches taller than Baldanzi! He cost £8.5m rising to £17.5m, which was also a new club record, usurping the £7.75m paid to Palermo for Antonino La Gumina in July 2019.

I also loaned in Samu Omorodion from Atlético and Reinier from Real Madrid and signed my first newgen of the save in promising centre-back Francisco Javier Álvarez for £600k from Valencia.

Life After Baldanzi

Baldanzi’s departure left us with a big hole to fill. He’d scored one-third of our league goals and we now had a mass of underperforming attackers. Summer signing Matteo Cancellieri, who’d struggled since his return from injury, finally stepped up with three assists as we won 3-0 at home to Cremonese. The first few games with the new signings didn’t look promising as we drew 0-0 at Monza, lost 2-0 at home to Roma and failed to put our chances away and drew 1-1 at home to Torino.

Weiper picked up a foot injury, amid a huge defender and midfielder injury crisis, so Samu came in for his debut at bottom side Catanzaro. We bossed the game and Samu eventually put us ahead then laid on the second for Stiven Shpendi. The hosts undeservedly got back into it but the underperforming Facundo Buonanotte came off the bench to bag a late double, which doubled his tally for the campaign.

That win moved us past the 40-point mark with 12 games remaining, so there’s no pressure on our young side for the remainder of the season. Specifically, there was no pressure on the next three games as we only lost 3-2 at Milan, holding midfielder Luca Lipani scored our first goal of the save against Juventus and then scored again as another Buonanotte double inspired a 3-2 win at Napoli, which completed the double over them!

One of the strangest matches of the save so far saw Weiper score his first goal from a corner while we restricted Hellas Verona to zero shots. We backed that up by being the better team but lacking the finish in a 0-0 at home to Lazio. The defensive stability was long-forgotten with a poor performance in a 3-1 defeat at Salernitana, in which left-back Liberato Cacace scored our best goal of the save so far, but we recovered to ease past Palermo 3-1 at home.

That left us just four points behind Juventus in the final European spot heading into the final five games. Hopes of that eased with an unlucky 1-0 loss at Sassuolo but we responded in style back at Stadio Carlo Castellani. We welcomed Inter to town and had the audacity to take the lead through midfielder Franco González only for Inter to immediately respond. However, Correa was sent off for a shocking two-footer from behind then Buonanotte won and converted a penalty six minutes later. And from there we took control and killed the game off with late Weiper and Shpendi strikes to thrash the leaders 4-1!

We suffered yet another 1-0 away defeat at Udinese, which officially ended any dreams of European football. Rivals Fiorentina came to town in our final home game and took the lead only for Weiper to immediately respond then put us in front just after half time, before homegrown midfielder Duccio Degli Innocenti wrapped up a vital win. The season concluded at 14th-place Bologna, who obviously scored their first shot. But an Alexsander screamer got us level just before the break then right-back Tommaso Barbieri drove forward and drilled one into the top corner for the rarity of an away victory.

That strong finish saw us wrap up 9th place ahead of Fiorentina. We finished on 61 points, which would have been enough for 6th place last season, but was a 13-point improvement. And we only lost once at home all season, which is a pretty impressive effort. Our attack improved in the second half of the campaign to score 56, which was one more than last season, while we conceded 49, which was an impressive 21 fewer than last season.

Season 2 At Empoli Review

Our 49 goals conceded was the 6th-best tally in Serie A, despite only keeping the 16th-most clean sheets (8), and we faced the 11th-most shots on target (179). We were also one of the cleanest teams in the league, making 325 fouls, which was only bettered by Lazio (259), despite winning the 8th-most tackles (807) and having the 4th-best tackles won ratio (78%). Only Palermo and Catanzaro made more than our 730 clearances and we made more interceptions than anyone else (958), with right-backs Barbieri and Conor Bradley topping the league in that category.

There’s no doubt the attack dropped off as we only scored the 11th-most goals, but we did come 8th in terms of shots on target (45%), conversion rate (15%) and shots per game (9.63). We didn’t score or concede a single direct free-kick all season, but did get three goals from indirect free-kicks and six from corners. We conceded seven from corners and two from indirect free-kicks. And, potentially most impressively of all, we were the only team in Serie A not to concede a penalty!

Our achievements are made all the more impressive as we had the lowest net transfer spend (thanks to selling Baldanzi) and 19th-lowest salary per annum in Serie A. We spend just £17m per year, only more than Catanzaro’s £10.7m), absolutely miles behind Inter’s £129m, Juve’s £118m and Milan’s £106m. And even Fiorentina, who we pipped to 9th, spend three times more than us at £55m.

Despite leaving in January, Baldanzi remained our top scorer with 10 goals and, bizarrely, still won the fans’ player and young player of the season! Buonanotte stepped up a little to finish on 9 goals followed by Shpendi (8), González (6), Weiper (5 in 13) and Lipani and Alexsander (4). Degli Innocenti led the way with seven assists followed by Cancellieri (6, 3 of which were in one match) and Alexsander and Buonanotte (5). But an unlikely star performer was Barbieri, who got a 7.08 average rating from right back, and Lipani was the only other outfield player to achieve over 7.00.

We got another decent youth intake, as proven by the youth candidates hammering our under 18s 4-2. The pick of the bunch is winger Matteo Malotti, along with centre-back Pantaleo Nunziatini, striker Onofrio Malotti (not sure if he’s a relation to Matteo), wingers Leonardo Padovani and Paolo Voltan and goalkeeper Marco Fontana. Although all their potential has supposedly dropped by one star between youth intake day and early May. Additionally, the board agreed to improve the youth facilities and youth recruitment at the end of the season.

I don’t expect this summer to be as drastic as the previous summer, with much less deadwood to be getting rid of. However, we do still have some of the Baldanzi money to work with and there are key areas that we need to try and strengthen.

So can we strengthen in the summer and look to maintain Empoli FC’s top-half status? Join us tomorrow to find out!