Roberto Piccoli, Fiorentina forward, enters the final stretch of the summer window as one of the club's most likely departures — a player whose modest 2025-26 numbers have done little to complicate the viola's thinking about where the squad needs to go next.
The context around Piccoli has shifted decisively this week. Franco Mastantuono, the teenage Real Madrid talent, arrived in Florence to a reception that confirmed the club's appetite for a different kind of attacker: younger in profile, higher in ceiling, and arriving with the institutional weight of a loan from one of European football's most powerful clubs. Simultaneously, Pellegrino of Parma has been linked to Fiorentina as a potential addition, with Juventus also interested. The club is not standing still, and Piccoli is not at the centre of its movement.
The numbers explain why. Across 31 Serie A appearances in 2025-26, Piccoli registered three goals and one assist, an average rating of 6.50, and an AI overall score of 56 out of a possible 100 — with a projected ceiling of 68. That ceiling figure is the most telling detail: it suggests a player who, at 25, is approaching the upper limit of what analysts expect from him. For a club that finished 14th with 42 points from 38 matches — nine wins, fifteen draws, fourteen defeats, 41 goals scored — the pressure to improve the attack is structural, not cosmetic.
Fiorentina's pre-season has underlined the direction of travel. A 1-1 draw against Deportivo La Coruña in the final summer friendly saw Ndour score for the viola, with Joao Mario — the recently arrived Juventus loanee — also featuring. Paolo Vanoli's side is being assembled around different pieces. Piccoli was not among the names generating headlines from that fixture.
There is also turbulence at board level. A dispute between club president Commisso and Fiorentina legend Antognoni over the retirement of the number 10 shirt for the centenary season has created noise around the club at a moment when clarity of purpose would serve everyone better. That internal friction rarely helps peripheral players make their case to stay.
Piccoli is not without value. Three goals from a supporting role in a team that scored only 41 times across the entire campaign is not nothing. But the viola are building toward something more ambitious, and a forward whose analytical ceiling sits at 68 — in a squad now adding Mastantuono and monitoring further reinforcements — faces a straightforward calculation: find a club where he is a priority, or accept diminishing minutes in Florence.
The window is open. The evidence points one way.