Tapirs and Massimo Gobbi with Viola Nation

If you're a Fiorentina fan who uses social media, you've probably seen the tweets from Viola Nation (@ViolaNation), a blog about Fiorentina entirely in English, managed by Tito Kohout. 

It's not easy to find someone who talks so precisely yet ironically about la Viola, so I asked Tito a few things about his passion and why he chose Fiorentina in particular.

Marta: First of all, I want to know how you chose Fiorentina? Why did you want to inflict this punishment on yourself?

Tito: I didn’t entirely get to choose. My grandmother was born in San Benedetto Po but came to the US when she was an infant. She died when I was very young and I have almost no memories of her, but her favorite city was Firenze. 

When I was 10, my family got cable TV for the first time and we got Sky Sports. Shortly after, I saw the highlights from Fiorentina against Brescia,. Batistuta scored two and Edmundo got the other. The purple shirts, the charismatic strikers, the fact that it wasn’t English - I fell in love. The next year, we went to Florence to scatter my grandmother's ashes in the Arno and that sealed the deal.

A few years later, I found Fiorentina Offside, an English language forum for Fiorentina fans, and I began regularly reading and eventually posting. A few years later, the site became Viola Nation and I ended up taking on a job writing for it. Now I can’t imagine a life without la Viola or VN.

Marta: Who is your Fiorentina favourite player?

Tito: I’ve always loved Adrian Mutu. He had the technical ability and the personality and he scored every goal. I had a bootleg Mutu shirt that I wore for years until it literally disintegrated on my back. 

He was like my first crush, and even all these years later I can’t forget him. On the more obscure side, I’ve always loved Massimo Gobbi for reasons that I can’t entirely explain but did write about a couple years ago. 

From the current squad, it’s between Dodô and Luca Ranieri for now, although Danilo Cataldi and Pietro Comuzzo are closing in for the prize of my undying affection.

Marta: How are Fiorentina viewed outside of Italy, and has anything changed since Rocco Commisso arrived?



TIto: I can only speak for the US and even then I’m probably a bad representative sample, as I live on the west coast rather than the east coast, which has a much larger Italian-American population. 

From what I can tell, though, Serie A remains the fourth or fifth most watched league in the country and is generally only popular with folks who grew up watching it or have Italian heritage. 

I occasionally see someone wearing a Milan or Roma shirt but the Premier League, MLS, and La Liga (i.e. Barcelona and Real Madrid) are miles beyond everyone else. 

To provide some context, I went to a bar for the Conference League final against West Ham a couple years ago. It was packed, standing room only, and I was the only Fiorentina fan there.

Even among the few Serie A fans, Fiorentina’s a pretty rare vintage. I don’t think that Commisso’s purchase of the club has raised the profile over here. There was a moment where I thought it might - him and Vincenzo Montella on a billboard in Times Square was something - but it doesn’t seem like there’s any real effort to increase the market share. 

It doesn’t help that some at Paramount+, which has all the Serie A games in the US, seem interested only in the biggest clubs in the country and are aggressively ignorant about everything else. Maybe that would’ve changed if Fiorentina had won the Conference League, but I think it would take several years of sustained success to really get there, and even then I don’t think it would matter much. Nobody here’s an Atalanta supporter, for instance.

Marta: Do you think you'll finally get to see a trophy being lifted?

Tito: This year? No. Under Palladino? It’s unlikely but possible. Before I die? Probably not. Maybe my ghost can stick around and haunt the Rocco B Commisso Viola Park for the Best Players and Fans of All Time for another century or two. Maybe then.

Marta: One last thought about the city that represents Fiorentina. I imagine you've been there many times. What strikes you, and do you think there is a unique and indissoluble bond between the city and the team?

Tito: I’ve only been to Florence a handful of times so I won’t pretend I’m qualified to tell the people who live there about their own city, but what always stands out to me is the beauty.

I think it’s easy to forget if you grow up in it and see it every day, but it’s the most beautiful city on earth for my money. Sunset at the Piazzale Michelangelo always feels like watching something magical happen. Maybe it is.

There’s definitely a unique bond between the city and the team. As you know, Florence is the biggest city (after Napoli) with a single Serie A team, and that means the whole city unites behind the Viola in a way that you don’t see in many other places. I think the combination of that unity and the Florentine sense of humor and proportion is what makes it special to me.

On my honeymoon, I took my wife to the Atalanta game (2-0, Veretout’s penalty, Biraghi’s late free kick, Gasperini spewing venom about Chiesa's diving). She doesn’t speak Italian and doesn’t like sports of any kind but she humored me and ended up having a wonderful time. 

There was a guy with a Thereau shirt in front of us and a kid who, when Papu Gómez went down easily, spent the next 10 minutes yelling, “You’ll never walk again, you must be crippled for life.” 

To me, it’s that irony that sets the fans apart. The ultras are always present and the fans are loud and informed, but watching a child sarcastically attack an opposing star like that is amazing. That’s the sort of support I love.

Marta: Bonus question: those who follow you, including myself, know that whenever things go wrong, tapirs appear in your tweets. How did this start, and why tapirs specifically?

Tito: Ha, I have no idea why I started doing the tapirs. I think it’s because they’re just funny looking animals and their facial expressions often encapsulate my feelings about watching Fiorentina very carefully set down a series of rakes and then step on every single one. Sometimes I wish I could’ve chosen the capybara or the hyrax or the gharial or some other dumb looking animal, but the tapir it is.