Kurt HAMRIN (1934-2024)
No player has scored more goals for Fiorentina in the club’s history than Hamrin; not even Gabriel Batistuta, who fell one short of the Swede’s total of 208.
Hamrin arrived in Florence in 1958, weeks after scoring four goals en route to the World Cup final on home soil as Sweden lost to a Pele-inspired Brazil. The winger was the last remaining survivor from that match.
Hamrin was one of a number of talented Swedes lured away from their country’s amateur league in the mid-1950s by high-paying Italian clubs. Hamrin initially joined Juventus in 1956, but only lasted a year before joining Padova. He scored 20 goals in 30 games to lead the minnows to a best-ever third place in Serie A.
Sweden’s English manager George Raynor convinced the Swedish FA to scrap its ban on foreign-based stars to allow the likes of Hamrin, plus fellow Serie A stars Gunnar Gren and Nils Liedholm, to compete at their World Cup. When he returned, Padova had sold him to Fiorentina.
His crowning achievement with La Viola came in 1960-61, when he scored six goals – including the winner against Rangers in the final – in the inaugural European Cup Winners’ Cup, and lifted the Coppa Italia. Despite two secondplace finishes, he never won Serie A in his nine years at the club – a record he corrected after joining Milan for the 1967-68 season. As well as the Scudetto, he lifted another Cup Winners’ Cup – scoring twice in the final v Hamburg – in his first season at the San Siro, followed by the European Cup in his second.
That proved to be the final trophy of Hamrin’s career, as spells at Napoli and IFK Stockholm yielded no further honours, before retiring in 1972.
Jorge TORO (1939-2024)
The midfielder was a star of the Chile side that finished third at the 1962 World Cup on home soil, scoring in the infamous “Battle of S
