Fiorentina beat Pisa 3-0 in the Coppa Italia on Tuesday, with goals from Pellegrino, Gnonto, and Goncalves sending Paolo Vanoli's side into the round of sixteen — but Franco Mastantuono, the 19-year-old Argentine midfielder, was not among the scorers, finishing the evening without a goal or an assist in his Coppa Italia appearance this season.
That is not a crisis. It is a data point worth holding alongside everything else.
Mastantuono's Serie A numbers for 2026-27 tell two distinct stories depending on which match you look at. His single Coppa Italia outing produced a blank. His Serie A record, by contrast, shows three goals across four league appearances, with an average rating of 7.15 — figures that made him the central figure in Fiorentina's 4-2 win against Venezia, a result covered in this column when Mastantuono's hat-trick gave Vanoli's side their first league win of the campaign. Tuesday's cup victory was built by different hands.
Vanoli was reported to have addressed Mastantuono directly after the match, though the substance of what the Fiorentina coach said has not been disclosed. The detail itself is telling: a manager singling out a player in the aftermath of a comfortable win suggests an ongoing conversation about role, expectation, or development — not a player being quietly managed out of the picture.
The broader context for Fiorentina is one of cautious momentum. Three points from four Serie A matches leaves the club in fifteenth place, and a goal difference of minus six in the league underlines how much defensive fragility has offset Mastantuono's attacking output. The cup win — a second consecutive victory following the Venezia result — does not fix the league table, but it extends a run of form that had been entirely absent in August.
For Mastantuono specifically, the cup blank is a minor interruption to a season that has otherwise opened with genuine promise. An AI overall of 67 out of 100, with a potential of 82, frames him as a player still ascending rather than one already arrived. At 19, the gap between those two numbers is the most interesting thing about him — and three Serie A goals before the end of September suggests the trajectory is moving in the right direction.
The round of sixteen against Napoli will arrive soon enough, and with it a sharper test of whether Mastantuono can influence matches against opposition of a different calibre. His Serie A rating of 7.15 earned against the league's lesser resistance; cup football against a Napoli side managed by Allegri will ask a harder question. Vanoli, it seems, is already preparing him for it.