Fiorentina are stealing a title race they do not deserve

What was at stake on Sunday at the Artemio Franchi was first place, and Fiorentina took it. Cristian Fernández's goal beat Juventus 1-0, ending three straight defeats to them, and the table this morning reads third for the Viola, level with the sides around them at the top and looking down on everyone who expected a different autumn. What was not at stake, because nobody was counting it, was the truth of the numbers underneath.

Nine games in, Fiorentina have 21 points. The chances they have created and the chances they have allowed, weighed game by game, are worth 13.8. That is a gap of 7.2 points, the widest in Serie A, and it puts them ninth in the table the coaches keep in private. Inter, on 20.3, have 23 points. Juventus, on 19.8, have 22. Lazio, on 18.7, have 19. Those are the sides whose results match their football. Fiorentina's do not.

Split the gap and it tells you where it comes from. Going forward they have scored 15 from chances worth 12.3 — 2.7 goals more than the quality of the chances merits. Some of that is finishing, some of it is a goalkeeper beaten by shots he should have saved, some of it is the sort of luck that visits a team for a month and then leaves without a word. Going the other way they have conceded 6 from chances worth 7.1 — 1.1 fewer against than they allowed. That is the part a defender trusts. A side that gives up little and saves what it gives up is not living on air; it is defending its box.

So the honest reading is not that Fiorentina are impostors. It is that they are a well-drilled side with a hot streak in both boxes at once, and that the streak is doing a great deal of the work. The win over Juventus was the perfect illustration: a clean sheet, one goal, a match decided by the sort of concentration Carollo has demanded since he took the job. He has built something that does not panic. But a coach cannot bank finishing. He can only bank shape, and shape is what keeps a team in the fight when the scoring dries up.

That is the warning worth sounding now, while the mood is good. The table says third. The chances say ninth. The truth sits somewhere in between, and the next two months will decide which end of it Fiorentina belong to. If the finishing cools — and it will — the defensive discipline has to carry them. If the defending slips at the same time, the fall is steep from here.

"We defended like a team that wanted it," was the word from the dressing room after Juventus. Fine. Wanting it is not a tactic. Keeping it, over thirty-eight games, is. Fiorentina have earned their points and nobody should hand them back. But they have not yet earned the right to be called title contenders on merit, only on results. The difference between those two things is exactly the 7.2 points they are carrying in their pockets — and pockets, in this league, get emptied.