Giovanni Trapattoni knows how to turn a phrase. “Stagnant water smells,” he said. “You need to throw a stone into it.” Those words were the ones he used to make a few ripples before his first return to Wembley since 1963 when he played a role in Milan’s victory over Eusébio’s Benfica in the European Cup final. Here Trap was again, back under those iconic twin towers as the coach of Fiorentina preparing for a decisive Champions League group stage match with Arsenal in October 1999.

Four days earlier, he had offered to resign from his post only for his employer, the extravagant film producer, Vittorio Cecchi Gori, to persuade him to stay. Three defeats in a row in Serie A had left the club down in 11th place and out of contention for the league title that they had contested so strongly the previous season. The Viola had led the championship at Christmas and were it not for an injury to Gabriel Batistuta so cruelly coinciding with Edmundo’s selfish decision to fly back to Brazil for the Rio Carnival, a first Scudetto in 30 years would have been on the cards.

Instead, everything was now coming apart at the seams. There was talk of a dressing room split, of clans lining up against each other. “Who is saying that?” asked Batistuta. “I want names. It’s too easy to hide behind ‘someone said this’ and ‘someone said that’.”  But as everyone knows sometimes actions speak louder than words. When Enrico Chiesa scored the previous week against AIK Stockholm, he celebrated alone, his Fiorentina teammates ignoring him as they jogged back to the centre circle to await the restart.

Laying bare the truth of the matter was Moreno Torricelli who broke the ranks to suggest that some players weren’t pulling their weight and had to put their precious egos to one side. The attention fell on Manuel Rui Costa. While some among the Fiorentina fans considered the Portuguese playmaker to be the heir to the great Giancarlo Antognoni others thought his performance levels had dropped significantly since Cecchi Gori had rejected huge bids from Parma and Inter during the summer transfer window.

It was true that in the weeks prior to the Arsenal game, Rui Costa had cut a disillusioned figure. He was out of sorts and had become a shadow of his former self. He even got involved in a slanging match with a group of supporters outside the team hotel in Piacenza after Fiorentina conceded two late goals and lost to a side in the relegation zone on the Sunday before their trip to Wembley. Batistuta, recognising that his friend needed a shoulder to lean on, spent much of the flight to London keeping Rui Costa’s spirits up, telling his friend that he wasn’t the only one with a point to prove at that moment in time.

As one of Italy’s seven sisters, Fiorentina’s visage certainly had a few blemishes, but it was only a matter of time before things cleared up on the pitch. Strength was to be found in their coach’s wealth of experience, his ability to prepare for the big games and rise to the occasion. Wembley held good memories for Trap. He was genuinely excited to be back at the scene of his greatest achievement as a player and by reliving it managed to transmit the right mentality to his team. For the likes of Aldo Firicano, Fabio Rossitto, Sandro Cois and Alessandro Pierini, this was a one-off chance to play at the home of football and etch “I was here” on to its furniture.

Wembley has always held a mystique over the Italians, but the results their teams had achieved there in recent memory showed it was no longer a place to be feared. Trap could of course point to the example of Cesare Maldini, his former captain and teammate at Milan, who had guided Italy to a 1-0 win over Glenn Hoddle’s England in February 1997 with an effervescent Gianfranco Zola scoring the winning goal by bringing down Billy Costacurta’s long ball over the top and firing it past Tottenham goalkeeper Ian Walker with devastating composure.

Arsenal hadn’t exactly fared well there either since reaching an agreement with the FA to play Champions League ties at Wembley rather than at Highbury. From a business point of view, it made sense as the club were able to satisfy demand for tickets and double their gate receipts, but it also meant that they effectively ceded any home advantage. “We may be less comfortable,” Arsène Wenger said, “but it’s a big occasion to play there and we will have more support. It is a gamble but it shows as well that in the long-term you cannot imagine the club staying at Highbury forever.”

The gamble proved a busted flush. Knocked out of the group stages after drawing with Dynamo Kyiv and losing to Lens in front of big crowds at Wembley the previous season, Arsenal now risked suffering the same fate again. Beaten 4-2 by Louis van Gaal’s Barcelona, another defeat, this time to Fiorentina, would go a long way to consigning them to the Uefa Cup with tails firmly between their legs. And yet, Arsenal, it must be said, went into this encounter with confidence gleaned from their visit to Florence in September. Missing David Seaman, Lee Dixon and Manu Petit, they had, against the odds, played a mature and controlled game of football at the Artemio Franchi. Had Francesco Toldo not saved a penalty from Kanu, they would have deservedly won.

Kanu went some way to redeeming himself with a hot streak in the Premier League. His hat-trick inspired a come-from-behind win at Chelsea leaving Arsenal a single point behind leaders Leeds United before their clash at Wembley with Fiorentina.  Even so, Wenger remained wary. “I felt we were missing something in Europe,” he later reflected. “Every time we played on the continent, we came across a completely different football style. We couldn’t quite make sense of what was going on. The style was so different to what my team were used to in the Premiership. It took us time to adapt our game for that. In England, we knew what to expect and came prepared accordingly. Not so in Europe. It was a steep learning curve, and it took us time.”

Trapattoni was to teach Arsenal a lesson in that respect. La Gazzetta dello Sport called his game plan an “Italian masterpiece.” Rigorously organised, Fiorentina sought to control the match through positioning not possession. Set up in a 3-4-1-2 formation, Pierini marked Kanu on the right and Tomas Repka stuck to Bergkamp on the left, but when each of the Arsenal strikers exchanged places, the Fiorentina defenders chose not follow so as to keep their shape. By contrast, in midfield, man-marking was preferred to the zonal variety, with Trapattoni asking Angelo Di Livio, Jörg Heinrich, Rossitto and Cois to get tight and swap shirts with their opponents during rather than after the game. Fiorentina weren’t necessarily negative, but they also knew that with strikers like Batistuta and Chiesa up front, a single chance created by Rui Costa, who had been granted a free role by Trapattoni, would be enough for either of them to score.

Their chances of doing so, however, were almost dramatically reduced in just the second minute when Batistuta, nicknamed ‘El Camion’ or ‘The Lorry’ back in Argentina, all but ran over Dixon with a vicious tackle on the full-back’s right ankle which arguably should have been punished with a red card. Referee Lubos Michel instead chose to show a yellow. Had the Slovak been stricter in his punishment then Batistuta would never have gone on to write one of the most brilliant chapters of his career.

The tone of the game had been set. Fiorentina were rough and ready, allying aggression to their orderliness. These were certainly no shrinking violets. Cois stamped on Bergkamp’s foot off the ball, Rossitto banged into Kanu and Firicano dominated in the air, directing the defence with unexpected assurance. To Arsenal’s credit they weren’t fazed by the physicality of their opponents but it certainly added to the frustration they felt at failing to exploit several openings. Kanu skied an effort over the bar in the 38th minute while Vieira and Bergkamp hit a couple of air shots much to the disbelief of the 73,000 fans packed into Wembley. 

Batistuta would not make the same mistake. His time would come in the final quarter of an hour. Chiesa trapped the ball in the centre-circle then squared it to the onrushing Heinrich. He broke out of midfield, bore down on goal and drew Tony Adams out of defence before slipping a pass to Batistuta on the far right-hand side of the box. The Fiorentina No 9 took a touch with his right foot to settle himself before sweeping it past Nigel Winterburn with his left. The Arsenal full-back perhaps thought that he had done enough to show Batistuta outside and narrow the angle. He was wrong. Stood at his near post, Seaman heard something whistle past his face then dived. He was late. Too late, as the ball lashed into the top left-hand corner of his net.

There was no need for Batistuta to do la mitraglia, his famous machine gun celebration. His right foot had done that for him. The Argentinian striker’s shot rang out across the world just as his howitzer against Barcelona had done earlier that season and another against Manchester United would do later. It was his 185th goal for Fiorentina in their 100th European game and he stole the headlines the next morning. “Like a Bat out of hell,” quipped The Mirror. “Don’t cry for me, Fiorentina,” joked The Sun. Magnanimously Batistuta was keen to emphasise that it had been a team effort. “I scored a great goal, but it’s everybody’s victory,” he said, for Toldo had proven just as decisive as Batistuta

Arsenal thought they had equalised in the 85th minute when Fiorentina failed to deal with a cross floated into the box by Bergkamp. A poor clearance fell to Vieira’s feet. His shot deflected off Kanu out wide where Davor Suker, thrown on in an attacking substitution for Dixon, had a go at goal and saw his effort strike the post. It bounced back into the six-yard box for Kanu to have another bite at the cherry from point-blank range. Toldo, by now his nemesis, anticipated everything, and batted the ball away from danger. Seconds earlier he had been on the floor.

Kanu looked left then right. He was stunned. He couldn’t believe it and neither could the other Arsenal players, who threw up their hands in despair. “I don’t know how I did it,” Toldo said. It was an incredible save and one that sent out a reminder to that young upstart at Parma, Gigi Buffon, that if he wanted the Italy No 1 shirt at Euro 2000 in Holland and Belgium then he’d have to fight for it.

With hindsight, Batistuta’s and Toldo’s exploits in this 1-0 victory were some of the last hurrahs of a richly entertaining and highly popular Fiorentina side. They were a favourite among neutrals, one that many people considered their second team and looked forward to watching. Unbeknownst to everyone, Fiorentina had been dancing on the edge of a volcano and were staring financial oblivion in the face. The team was rapidly broken up. Batistuta was sold to Roma for £28.6m in 2000. Then a year later Inter bought Toldo for £23.3m and Milan signed Rui Costa for £36.9m, but even the proceeds from their departures weren’t enough to service the debts and save the club. 

Fiorentina as we knew them were gone. They would rise again. But yesterday, the 12th anniversary of that game at Wembley, remains a distinct purple patch for those with a passion for the Viola.