Fiorentina and Napoli will meet on Sunday at 12.30pm, with the heat expected to accompany an afternoon shaped by far more than the two benches. Fabio Paratici and Giovanni Manna, both formed during Juventus’s attempt to build a deeper football structure, arrive at the fixture carrying different stages of that old project into the present.
Key takeaways
- Juventus created its Under-23 side in the summer of 2018, a landmark step for Italian football.
- Filippo Fusco joined the project five months later, while Giovanni Manna was placed in charge of the Under-19s roughly a year after its launch.
- Fabio Pecchia later coached the young Juventus group, having previously worked with Fusco at Verona.
- Manna’s first senior sporting-director role ended with Napoli winning the Scudetto.
- Fusco believes directors leave their mark over months and years, but insists matches belong to coaches and players.
A Juventus project that looked beyond the first team
The Juventus Under-23 initiative was born in the summer of 2018, when the club moved into territory that had not previously existed in Italian football. The idea was Paratici’s, conceived within a club already investing in Vinovo, Continassa and the women’s side under Andrea Agnelli’s leadership.
Fusco, who had previously won promotion from Serie B with Napoli in 2000 and later repeated that achievement at Verona, as well as working at Bologna, accepted the call to oversee a broad youth-development area. He saw the appeal immediately.
“It was a completely new sporting project, something Italian football had not had before,” Fusco recalled. “I understood its meaning and wanted to be part of it.”
Pecchia subsequently took charge of the young players, reconnecting with Fusco after their Verona success. Around the project sat a wide group of football staff: Federico Cherubini worked alongside Paratici, while Fusco’s area included Claudio Chiellini, Marco Ottolini, Gianluca Pessotto, Matteo Tognozzi, Giuseppe Ursino and, later, Manna.
Paratici was carrying particularly heavy responsibility after Juventus’s separation from Giuseppe Marotta. Fusco remembers a director with an exceptional appetite for the game, able to spot players and willing to pursue an idea at any hour.
“Fabio would call even at two in the morning if something came into his head,” Fusco said. “There were proper disagreements because we did not always see matters in the same way, but they were for the good of the club. He is a genius.”
That quality, Fusco added, also came with risk. Paratici was prepared to take ownership of big decisions, at times with an intensity that could work against him. “Genius can also mean excess,” he said.
Manna’s rise and the work behind Sunday’s contest
Manna arrived from Lugano to begin his climb through Juventus’s youth system. Fusco describes their relationship as one built through long conversations and even longer dinners, with the older executive offering guidance to a colleague eager to progress.
“Giovanni has an enormous desire to learn and he does not hide his ambition,” Fusco said. “To win the title in his first experience as a sporting director shows that he made a real contribution.”
That title was Napoli’s Scudetto, a defining result in Manna’s rapidly developing career. Fusco, who has since left Cesena and is currently watching football from outside the daily rush of club work, will follow Fiorentina-Napoli with particular interest.
Yet he draws a clear line between the work of the directors and the contest itself. “Sporting directors do not play the match,” he said. “The game is for the coaches and players. What directors bring is the evidence of work done over previous months, and sometimes over years.”
There is still one small debt from the Juventus days, however. Manna now lives only a few kilometres from Fusco, and the former Cesena executive expects the younger man to settle the account for those old evenings spent moving between restaurants.
“After all these years, he owes me at least one dinner,” Fusco joked.
SEO Title: Fiorentina-Napoli: Paratici, Manna and the Juventus connection
SEO Description: Fiorentina-Napoli brings Fabio Paratici and Giovanni Manna’s shared Juventus background into focus, from the Under-23 project to Napoli’s Scudetto.
