Fortitudo: Ups and Downs Season Between Injuries and Decisive Playoff Challenges

Ups and downs, within individual matches and in the season itself. A bad start, an exciting central phase, a sprint that was once again below par have characterised the year of a Fortitude fighting more for a position in the play-in than in the playoffs. The season was marked by important peaks with the arrival of Attilio Caja, but with a finale in which clear and evident critical issues emerged from a year that started badly, which the white and blues tried to fix on the fly, but which is heading towards a conclusion that is not what could have been expected.

The challenge with Rimini follows the trend of the season for a Fortitudo that after a first half all in all on the edge of balance, reached +11 in the third fraction and then sank in the last quarter and was overtaken. physical and mental fatigue suffered by the team in the last quarter are something that has been repeated in other circumstances and that Fortitudo paid dearly for.

On the day of Luca Vencato and Pietro Aradori's recovery, Fortitudo had to give up Matteo Fantinelli. The captain's absence with Rimini was yet another blow to a season marked by many injuries. An unlucky year that began with the stop and long recovery of Aradori and continued with a series of problems that do not seem to want to abandon the white and blues. Injuries and fatigue these are important factors, to which must be added the fact that Fortitudo, with this Kenny Gabriel who is not playing, gives away a foreigner almost every week.

More harmful than useful, Gabriel fails to make an impact on the shot, in what should be his specialty, but often he is not even useful to the team, with defenses not up to par. Since returning to the field in the Avellino challenge, Gabriel has never been a positive factor, rarely showing flashes of class. Too little for a team that needs his points like bread. But what could be the final ranking of Fortitudo after the last 40 minutes of play?

The situation is tangled to say the least, with the final position of Effe varying from seventh place, victory in Livorno defeats for Verona, Milan and Turin, to thirteenth position in the event of a defeat in Livorno and arrival with an incredible pile-up of 6 teams at 40 points with Turin, Milan, Avellino, Pesaro and Brindisi. In the middle there is a variable of results and classification that do not depend only on Caja's formation and that, in the perspective of a championship without logic, would make one think of a Fortitudo that will have to play for access to the playoffs from the Caudine Forks of the play-in.