Fiorentina hit back in Gomes quit row

Fiorentina have blasted two star players who have asked for their contracts to be cancelled.

The National Professional League (LNP) which governs the professional game in Italy's Serie A and B will use its arbitration panel to decide if Portuguese striker Nuno Gomes and midfielder Marco Rossi can quit their contracts which run to June 2005.

The ailing Serie AS club have responded angrily:

"The wages owed for the months of July, August and September 2001 have been paid to the players. The method of payment.. was within norms of the federation."

But Nuno Gomes claimed today: "So many promises and tricks have disillusioned me and now I have taken an important and agonising decision. I am obliged to act to defend my professionalism."

Gomes and Marco Rossi want their Fiorentina contracts scrapped.

Both players' lawyers wrote to the LNP to try and annul their contracts with the Florence club.

In November Fiorentina club captain Angelo Di Livio asked for the club to be declared in default of wages payments to the squad but a compromise was reached to stop platers quitting Fiorentina en masse.

Gomes and Rossi have now broken up that agreement.

Benfica, Liverpool and Arsenal have all been linked with Gomes and he is now trying to become a free agent to end his stay at Fiorentina.