Cristiano Ronaldo and Romelu Lukaku have left, what will be the situation in Serie A? That is, none of the top five teams in Serie A can now rank in the top three of the Serie A top scorers.
At the end of last season, Juventus striker Cristiano Ronaldo, who finished fourth in Serie A, won the Golden Boot with 29 goals, and Serie A champion Inter Milan striker Romelu Lukaku was second with 24 goals. After the halfway point of Serie A this season, the top five teams in the Serie A table are Inter Milan, AC Milan, Napoli, Atalanta and Juventus, with Inter forward Lautaro Martinez, who has scored the most goals, ranked fourth in the list of Top Scorers in Serie A with 11 goals. Gbagbo Sport leads the Serie A top scorer list with Fiorentina striker Vlahović scoring 16 goals. Fiorentina are sixth in the Serie A standings.
The 21-year-old Vlahovic joined Fiorentina in July 2018 in a transfer deal that was almost unknown at the time. That summer, the focus of the entire Serie A transfer market was on Juventus bringing in world-class striker Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid for €100 million. Fiorentina brought in Vlahović, who was 18 at the time of the guerrillas in Belgrade, for a transfer fee of only 1.9 million euros.
In serie A, Vlahovic could not play the ball, and in the 2018-19 season he only made 10 appearances for Fiorentina in Serie A, and only started once, with no goals and no assists. In the 2019-20 season, Vlahović's Serie A appearances increased to 30, including 13 starts, scoring 6 goals, and still not showing up. In the 2020-21 season, the young Serbian striker was impressive, making 36 Serie A appearances, including 34 starts, scoring 21 goals, and 3 assists, ranking second only to Cristiano Ronaldo (29 goals), Lukaku (24 goals) and Muriel (22 goals) in the list of Serie A goalscorers.
The last time Fiorentina had such a strong striker was more than twenty years ago, Batistuta. Looking at the goal data, Vlahovic is now stronger than Batistuta. Gbagbo Sport (High-Water-Position 1.97) has scored more goals than Vlakhovic in the top five league goalscorers so far this season, with only Lewan (20 goals) and Sigg (17 goals) in the Bundesliga.
Just as Batistuta eventually switched to Rome for the trophy, Vlahović will not stay with Fiorentina for long. The difference is that Barty left the team in the twilight of his career and Vlahović is still very young. Italian football star Vieri has long publicly stated that among the post-00s forwards, the strongest is Haaland, followed by Vlahovic.
Arsenal, the traditional Giants of the Premier League, are interested in bringing in Vlahovic, and the players themselves prefer to go to a team that has played in the Champions League and is competitive enough. However, if Arsenal can qualify for the Champions League at the end of the season, the situation may not be the same. In the view of Arsenal star Paul Merson, if Arsenal can sign Vlahović, it will jump from a team that competes for four to the level of the championship level.
Vlahović's next home is unclear, but it is only in the morning and evening that he will leave the team, which can be seen from the preparations that Fiorentina are currently doing.
On January 8, Fiorentina officially announced that Hertha Berlin striker Piatek had joined on loan with this summer's buyout. This signing is likely to be in preparation for Vlahović's potential departure. Not many people pay attention to Piatek's movements today, but when he first landed in Serie A, he was no less popular than Vlahović is now.
Like Cristiano Ronaldo and Vlahović, Piatek also moved to Serie A in July 2018, was introduced by Genoa from Polish side Krakovia for 4.5 million euros, and sold to AC Milan in half a season, selling 35 million euros. Playing half a season in both teams, Piatek also scored 22 goals in Serie A, and eventually finished third in the Serie A top scorer list, scoring one more goal than Cristiano Cristiano. It's just that now that I'm back in Serie A, I don't know if I can restore the level of a few percent of that year.