When Fiorentina signed Moise Kean this summer, it had hardly raised an eyebrow. Just five years back he’d been the most exciting attacking talent Italy had seen in years, but in 2024 this was just another one of those low-money, journeyman signings that mid-table clubs make which go under the radar. Now 24, Kean had scored zero goals in twenty matches for Juventus last season and had, in fact, scored just 37 league goals over eight years in top-flight football. This was as un-hypeworthy as it gets, just another one of football’s lost talents struggling along in search of lost hope.
One man who did believe, though, was new Fiorentina head coach Raffaele Palladino. “I will not deny that I already wanted Kean when I was at Monza,” he would say. “I saw him as a great striker who has it all.”
Palladino made Kean a priority signing and showed him complete faith by immediately naming him the starting striker. Forever a backup at Juventus and an afterthought at Everton and Paris Saint Germain, Kean was now firmly the main man in Florence. Seemingly, this is what he’d been missing all his career — coming into the weekend’s match against Hellas Verona, he’d started every match he was fit for and had scored five goals. His movement has been rapid, his finishing tidy and decision-making unhesitant. It all came together against Verona in a performance where he showed everyone just what Palladino was talking about.
Kean’s first came when he ran onto a neat Lucas Beltran through ball, holding off Giangiacomo Magnini with absurd ease and squeezing in a tight finish at the near post. His second, to make it 2-1, was a Zlatan Ibrahimovic-esque stab off a corner as he held off Diego Coppola and made an awkward finish look routine. But it was his third that stole the weekend’s spotlight.
�� 3/3 pic.twitter.com/N7NkdSGzlm
– Lega Serie A (@SerieA) November 11, 2024
Deep into injury time he ran onto a beautifully placed hoick from David de Gea (another figure enjoying a spectacular resurgence in Tuscany), drew Reda Belahyane wide, jinked to fake a run on the outside, dropped a shoulder once inside the box, ignored Belahyane’s desperate lunge of a challenge, and absolutely plastered one low into the far corner. That goal was Kean at his best – pure physicality combined with a football intelligence that had made him stand out so much as a teenager – and a fitting way to grab a first career hattrick.
In the city that gave the world the great Western cultural Renaissance, Kean has started his own personal one. Match after match, minute upon minute, Kean is showing everyone just what he can do, just how good a footballer he is. His eight league goals now are already more than he’s scored in all but one of his seasons as a first division footballer (that was 13, with PSG) and by the looks of it, he is just getting started.
Fiorentina are now third on a Serie A table where the top six are separated by just two points. For a club that hasn’t competed for the title in a long while (highest finish in the last decade was fourth, 23 points behind the winners), these are heady heights. Moise Kean came to Florence in search of hope, and now he’s giving Fiorentina fans a reason to dream bigger than they have for a long while.
For giving La Viola fans that dream, and for a classic goal to cap off a first hattrick, he takes our Moment of the Weekend.