The good people of Empoli painted the streets blue with gallons of Nastro Azzurro, Chianti, limoncello and Negronis flowing freely as they celebrated the greatest day in the history of Empoli FC. Our young side defied all the odds to win the Europa League and record the highest-ever finish in club history.
To build on that, we had £79m in the bank, a transfer kitty of £54m and £300k of spare wage budget. But that didn’t translate into a reputational boost, at least according to our players, as several requested moves or refused to sign new contracts. As a result, we sold Franco González to Stuttgart for £40m, troublesome captain Stiven Shpendi and left-back Liberato Cacace for £21m and £7.5m to Saudi, centre-back Eduardo Quaresma to Leipzig for £12.5m and injury-ridden goalkeeper Ignacio de Arruabarrena to Bournemouth for £7m. That left us with a huge transfer kitty of over £100m.
To replace those players, we broke the club’s transfer record twice in two weeks. We snapped up River Plate’s Claudio Echeverri for £18m, who will need to retrain as a central midfielder, then Belgian left-back Yvan Boulesteix for £21.5m from Standard Liége. We also confirmed a permanent deal for 6ft 5in right-back Adam Bakoune for just £2.5m and signed another Argentinian midfielder Jonatan Ibarra for £6.5m from Independiente. Joining them were promising centre-back Carmelo Agnelli for £10.75m from Genk, exciting Greek striker Christos Kallergis for £5m from Cercle Brugge and backup keeper Adrián Prats for £4.5m from Valencia, which sees last season’s hero Primoz Kompara become number one.
Tactically, we’re obviously going to stick with the 3-5-2 approach that was so successful last season. And the squad is supremely young, with the average age decreasing further to just 20.04!
Uncharted Territory for Empoli
A measure of how far our unexpected success had brought us was competing in two competitions early on in the season. First up, our summer holidays were cut short by a trip to Sevilla to play Boca Juniors in the European/South American Club Challenge, a competition I’ve never even heard of between the Europa League and Copa Sudamericana winners.
Boca, who’d obviously copied “Latham ball,” made the better start without really threatening. But I fired the boys up at half-time and Echeverri, making his debut against his former club’s rivals, forced the keeper into a good save. But the game dragged to a 0-0, which meant another penalty shootout. Kompara saved their first and third penalties and Big Mads Rasmussen confidently dispatched our fourth to claim only our second major trophy!
Nearly a month later, we faced a much tougher task against European champions Bayern Munich in the European Super Cup. As expected, they battered us but got a very dodgy penalty, which wasn’t even close to being in the box, to take it away from us and won 3-0.
Beginning Season 5 at Empoli
Our overachievements have seen the pundits increase their expectations, predicting a 10th-place finish and halving our title odds to 100/1. Milan are favorites at 2/1 followed by last season’s runaway winners Napoli (7/2), Inter (4/1), Juventus (9/1) and Atalanta (14/1). While Echeverri is considered the 7th-best player in the league.
We again started the campaign against a newly promoted side with a trip to Modena. We started brightly and took advantage as a superb move between Rasmussen, Nelson Weiper and Bakoune ended up with a lovely finish by the right-back. But Modena grew into the game, missed a penalty and hit the post in injury time as we held on for a 1-0 win with Kompara again the hero. The Empoli fans got their first chance to set eyes on the glistening Europa League trophy as we hosted Lecce. And we were much improved, with Weiper scoring twice inside 22 minutes before Echeverri’s first for the club sealed a comfortable 3-0 win. We had another homegrown hero at Torino as midfielder Mirko Provaroni came off the bench to become the club’s youngest-ever scorer aged 16 years 62 days.
That was three clean sheets in three games and we were full of confidence, as proven by dominating Milan and winning 3-1 led by a Weiper brace and two Bakoune assists against his former club. However, the goalkeeper injury curse hit Kompara as the tough games continued, losing to Napoli, Roma, Sassuolo, where we’ve still never won, before playing well to earn a 1-1 with Juve and 2-2 at Lazio with goals by both wing-backs Bakoune and Boulesteix.
A more favourable run of games followed and we went on a 10-game unbeaten run, including thumping Bologna 4-0 and an impressive 1-1 at Inter. Unbelievably, that left us 2nd, just two behind Napoli after 18 matches but, crucially, only nine points separate the top nine. We have the best defence with just 15 conceded and the fourth-best attack with 35 goals scored. Weiper tops the goalscoring chart with 13 and the ridiculously impressive Bakoune has the most assists (7) and player of the match awards (6).
Empoli in the Champions League!
I didn’t think I’d ever be saying this but, at the end of August, Empoli’s Champions League fixtures were revealed. We’ll face the ultimate test with a trip to Santiago Bernabéu as well as home games against Liverpool and Dortmund.
Empoli FC’s first-ever match in the Champions League took us to France to face Saint-Étienne. The first 79 minutes were a non-event until Reyna scored a screamer. But we responded well as Admir Arap came off the bench to tee up Weiper to claim our first Champions League point. Another trip to France to face Monaco followed and we were equally solid as Weiper bagged an 85th-minute winner! The first Champions League match at Stadio Carlo Castellani was a tough one as Liverpool came to town. Both teams should have scored early on but Nunez scored a fantastic goal and Liverpool scored their first four shots on target. But we more than played our part, scoring through Boulesteix and Rasmussen and wasting a couple of decent chances to get back into it, which I was happy enough with.
I identified Slavia Prague at home as one of the few must-win games, but we made it hard for ourselves by conceding after nine minutes. But from then on it was one-way traffic as Boulesteix sent Echeverri through to finish superbly and Bakoune whipped in a cross that striker Sebastián Miglioli powered home. We bossed the game but missed chances, had two goals disallowed and won 2-1.
Another crucial game was Feyenoord at home, which delivered the most dominant half of this save. Jacopo Fazzini sent Weiper through for the opener after a clinical counter attack, Miglioli swiftly doubled the lead, but Weiper was the main man, scoring two quickfire goals to wrap up his hat-trick – our first of the entire save – before half time. There was time for the ref to give them a penalty, but Kompara got in on the act to save it. I took off both wing-backs and the holding midfielder, which allowed Feyenoord back in, but we secured a huge 4-2 win that leaves us 15th heading into the tricky final two games.
We’ve made impressive progress in Europe and pretty much confirmed our status as the best of the rest alongside Atalanta, but the big boys are still too powerful for us. Furthermore, our youth recruitment was given a boost as homegrown European Final hero Kompara became the first Empoli player to win European Golden Boy.
Can Empoli record another record finish in Serie A? And will we qualify for the Champions League knockout phases? Join us on Wednesday to find out!
Football Manager Addict 
Leave a comment