Fabio Grosso and Sassuolo's return to Serie A: a historic success

On Friday night he was the last to take the stage, after the managers and players, almost as if protocol had saved the last applause for him, the one that effectively decreed the end of the black-green season. In any case, historic, thanks to the immediate return to Serie A, also thanks to him. "One of the main architects of our success", said Giovanni Canrevali of him, who together with Francesco Palmieri immediately chose Fabio Grosso, the day after last season's relegation.

Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of that day that seemed to be about to kill the black-green project, and instead, many other horizons are opening up, already today, in front of a club that has focused not only on the right group, but also on the right coach. It is true that Fabio Grosso had already won Serie B, but in football one plus one does not always equal two and so where the merits of the club and players end, those of the coach begin. Who immediately immersed himself in a reality like the black-green one ("atypical but beautiful", he called it), taking charge of an oversized group and bending its moods towards an objective that is now almost claimed. The objective was Serie A, but it is one thing to set it, another to reach it, and with five rounds to spare on the basis of numbers that have 'killed' the season. The coach went through a so-so start, he remotivated players like Laurientè and Thorstvedt, he supported the return and growth of Berardi ("good job by the club to keep them: among so many good guys – he said – they were our flagship") and more generally of a very heterogeneous group, obtaining the maximum also from the second lines (21 goals from the substitutes) that Grosso has never considered second lines because, in his words, "Whoever starts the game can bend it, whoever comes in can break it".

In the square, the finish line was rightly enjoyed: "After a difficult and tiring year, we have achieved a huge goal", said the black-green coach, with respect to whose confirmation the doubts had already been dispelled by the declarations made by both himself and Giovanni Carnevali no later than a month. So? So we look forward, "because in any path you take you cannot ignore the difficulties"The ones that have appeared before him from last July to today are archived, now others are arriving, but Grosso is aware that "we are going to face a very difficult championship: we have to structure ourselves to be ready". Carnevali and Palmieri, on stage a short distance from the black-green coach, will have predictably taken note.