Tariq Lamptey’s Fiorentina Tenure Ends After Just 25 Minutes

Fiorentina have drawn a brutal line under one of their shortest and most ill-fated experiments. Tariq Lamptey’s contract has been terminated by mutual consent, closing a chapter that yielded just 25 competitive minutes and a career-altering injury.

The numbers are stark. The 25-year-old arrived in Florence last summer from Brighton in a $6 million deal, penning a three-year contract and carrying the weight of old promises. This was supposed to be the reboot. The former Chelsea prospect, once singled out by Frank Lampard after a sparkling debut against Arsenal, had come to Serie A to outrun his injury history.

Instead, it followed him through the door.

Lamptey’s Fiorentina career barely flickered into life. He made a short cameo against Napoli, a glimpse rather than a performance, and then came the night that ended everything before it had truly begun: Como away, September 21, 2025, his first start in purple.

Twenty-two minutes. One wrong moment. A ruptured anterior cruciate ligament.

He never played for Fiorentina again.

The ACL tear did not arrive in isolation. It sat on top of a long, wearying catalogue of fitness problems that had already stalled his progress in England. At Brighton, Lamptey’s explosive style and obvious talent kept colliding with his own body. Spells on the treatment table became as familiar as his bursts down the right flank.

That pattern simply crossed borders. In Italy, all that promise shrank to those 25 minutes and a place on the medical report.

Fiorentina have acted before the season is even out, finalising the termination with two Serie A games still to play. From the club’s perspective, it ends a costly gamble that never came close to paying off and frees up salary for a squad that needs reliable availability, not just potential.

For Lamptey, the timing cuts deep. The 2026 FIFA World Cup is only weeks away, a stage he once seemed destined to reach at full speed in Ghana’s colours. Instead, with no match fitness and no recent football to lean on, a Black Stars call-up looks remote.

He now steps into free agency again, still young, still quick, still carrying that early reputation—but trailed by a medical file that scares sporting directors as much as his acceleration once scared full-backs.

Fiorentina move on with barely a footprint left behind. Lamptey moves on too, searching yet again for the one thing that has always eluded him more than any defender: a stretch of time on the pitch, uninterrupted.