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ACF Fiorentina, formerly Associazione Calcio Fiorentina, is an Italian football club based in Firenze (Florence). The club traditional colors were originally red and white but were changed to purple and white in 1928 and since then the club is almost generally known as "the Viola" (the purple ones).
The club was founded on August 26, 1926 by the merger of Libertas and Club Sportivo Firenze. The club won its first trophy in 1939-40 with the Coppa Italia and its first scudetto (Italian championship) in 1955-1956, the club were runners-up in the four following seasons. In the 1960-1961 season the club won the Coppa Italia again and was also successful in Europe, winning the first Cup Winners' Cup against Rangers.
In the 1960s the club won the Coppa Italia and the Mitropa Cup in 1966 and were league champions again in 1968-1969. Success in the Coppa Italia was repeated in 1975, but from then until the late 1990s the club was in the doldrums, culminating in a season in Serie B (second division) in 1993-1994. Upon return to Serie A the club again proved able in the cup competitions, winning the Coppa Italia again in 1996 and 2000 and the Italian SuperCoppa.
The club's financial situation was revealed to be poor in mid 2001, the club was unable to pay wages and had debts of around USD 50 million. The club owner, Vittorio Cecchi Gori, came in with more money but soon proved to have insufficient resources to sustain the club. The club was then relegated at the end of the 2001-2002 season and went into judicially controlled administration in June 2002. Due to a sort of bankruptcy (sport companies don't precisely fail in Italy, but can suffer a similar procedure), the club was refused a place in Serie B for the 2002-2003 season. The club was then re-established in August as Florentia Viola with a new owner, Diego Della Valle, and admitted to Serie C2. In the club's year in Serie C2, it easily won its regional section, which would normally have led to a promotion to Serie C1. In the 2003 off-season, the club bought back the right to use the Fiorentina name, reincorporated as ACF Fiorentina, and was kicked up to Serie B, skipping Serie C1, after the Italian Football Federation decided to increase the number of teams in Serie B from 20 to 24 because of Caso Catania. The unusual double promotion caused some controversy; however, Fiorentina ended the 2003-2004 season in sixth, placing the Viola in a two-legged test match against Perugia (the 15th-place finisher in Serie A) for a position in Serie A. The Viola completed a remarkable return to Serie A by winning the test match 2-1 on aggregate.
The club usually plays at the 47,500-seater Communal Stadium "Artemio Franchi" (previously called Comunale di Firenze, that replaced in the '30s the "Giovanni Francesco Berta")
Famous players for Fiorentina have included Julinho, Miguel Montuori, Kurt Hamrin, Giancarlo De Sisti, Giovanni Galli, Luciano Chiarugi, Roberto Baggio, Gabriel Batistuta, Stefan Effenberg, Brian Laudrup, Francesco Toldo, Andrei Kanchelskis, Lorenzo Amoruso, Rui Costa, Giancarlo Antognoni, Enrico Chiesa, and Hidetoshi Nakata.
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