Venezia have sacked head coach Giovanni Stroppa, ending his spell in charge with the club rooted to the bottom of Serie A on zero points after six straight defeats — just months after he led them back into the Italian top flight.
The decision was confirmed on Tuesday, with Reuters reporting that the club had acted after a start to the season that produced no points at all from their opening six league matches. Venezia announced that Stroppa had been relieved of his duties as first-team head coach, and thanked him and his staff for their work, professionalism and commitment during their time with the club.
It is a brutal end to a story that, until a few weeks ago, had been one of Italian football's happier ones.
From Promotion Party To Crisis
Stroppa, a former AC Milan midfielder and Italy international, took charge of Venezia in June last year. His first season could hardly have gone better: the Lagunari finished first in Serie B and won promotion back to Serie A after only one season away, playing their way out of the second tier as one of its leading sides.
That credit, however, has been spent at remarkable speed. Six league games into the new campaign, Venezia have lost every single one of them. A side that came up with momentum has found the step up ruthless, conceding goals in bunches and struggling to turn competitive spells in matches into anything tangible on the scoreboard.
Monday night's 3-1 defeat at Atalanta proved to be the final straw. Venezia actually started brightly in Bergamo and caused the hosts early problems, but they were 3-0 down inside half an hour and, although they pulled a goal back before the break, a sixth consecutive defeat was never really in doubt from that point on.
After that match Stroppa accepted responsibility for the results and acknowledged that the decision on his future rested with the club. By Tuesday morning, the club had made it.
Who Comes Next?
The search for a successor is already under way, and the early names will be familiar to anyone who follows the Serie A relegation battle. According to Italian media reports cited by Reuters, Paolo Zanetti and Davide Nicola are among the candidates being considered.
Zanetti knows the club well, having previously coached Venezia and led them to promotion in an earlier spell, while Nicola has built a career out of exactly this kind of assignment — arriving mid-season at a struggling club and organising a survival fight. Whoever takes the job will not lack for urgency: the new coach's first match is at home to eighth-placed Napoli on Saturday, hardly the soft landing a side on zero points would have wished for.
There is also a wider pattern here. Stroppa is the latest coach to pay for a poor start this autumn, following a similar parting of the ways at Osasuna in Spain this week and the dismissal of Fernando Diniz in Brazil — a reminder that patience in the modern game is measured in weeks, not months, when the table starts to look ugly.
A Squad That Needs Points, Fast
The uncomfortable truth for Venezia is that changing the coach does not change the arithmetic. Zero points from six games means the gap to safety will only grow if the losing run stretches much further, and a squad built for a promotion push has so far looked short of the defensive solidity Serie A demands.
Stroppa himself argued after the Atalanta game that his players had been performing better than their results suggested, pointing to the chances his side created and the players returning from injury. There may be something in that — Venezia hit the woodwork twice in Bergamo — but owners rarely wait for the underlying numbers to turn when the actual numbers read played six, lost six.
The incoming coach will inherit a team low on confidence but not yet cut adrift. A result against Napoli, however unlikely it looks on paper, would transform the mood around the Stadio Pier Luigi Penzo. Another heavy defeat, and the season risks becoming a salvage operation before October is even out.
Beyond the Final Whistle: Stroppa delivered the season Venezia dreamed of last year, but six straight defeats at the start of this one left the club with little choice. The promotion hero departs with the Lagunari bottom and pointless — and his successor has days, not weeks, to find a first result. Can Venezia turn this around, or is an immediate return to Serie B already inevitable? Tell us in the comments.
