Marked for Edoardo Meconi
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad29 Oct 2035
Alvis Jurkovskis damages knee ligaments — 52 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 52 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Boardroom29 Oct 2035
Ravenna counting the cost
The accounts make uncomfortable reading. Wages first and ambition second is the order of business at Ravenna now.
Match27 Oct 2035
5 matches without a win for Ravenna
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around Ravenna are no longer polite ones.
Player ratings29 Oct 2035
Successful dribbles: 24. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad29 Oct 2035
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ravenna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad29 Oct 2035
Nikola Bilic gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Nikola Bilic has just signed for Ravenna, and for once the answer mattered.
Player ratings29 Oct 2035
Marked 7.41. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
The dugout29 Oct 2035
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Interim Coach chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
The dugout29 Oct 2035
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad8 Oct 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Alvis Jurkovskis
73 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Ravenna lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match6 Oct 2035
7 unbeaten for Ravenna
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 7 matches without defeat is a foundation Ravenna did not have in the autumn.
Squad8 Oct 2035
A falling-out at Ravenna
Tommaso Lastoria and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad8 Oct 2035
“The easiest signature of my career.” Edoardo Meconi and Ravenna agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad8 Oct 2035
At 35, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
Match6 Oct 2035
The run at home goes on for Ravenna
8 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Player ratings8 Oct 2035
Marked 7.78 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Ravenna had the best player on the pitch.
Loan watch8 Oct 2035
“I did not go to Dolomiti Bellunesi to sit and watch. I want to come back to Ravenna and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 5 matches say the rest.
Player ratings8 Oct 2035
Successful dribbles: 15. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad26 Mar 2035
A falling-out at Ravenna
Thiago Verardi and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Player ratings26 Mar 2035
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match24 Mar 2035
Livorno made Ravenna work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad26 Mar 2035
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Player ratings26 Mar 2035
Marked 7.92 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Ravenna had the best player on the pitch.
The dugout26 Mar 2035
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Interim Coach on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Squad26 Mar 2035
A row about effort at Ravenna
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Matteo Gamberini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout26 Mar 2035
The plan did not have a place for Nicola Farinelli
Nobody at Ravenna is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
The dugout26 Mar 2035
Raffaele Rizzi dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market18 Sep 2034
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Ravenna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad18 Sep 2034
Thiago Verardi was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad18 Sep 2034
A row about effort at Ravenna
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lorenzo Da Pozzo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Match16 Sep 2034
At last: Ravenna win one
5 matches without a win, and then this, against Latina. Relief is a strange noise in a football ground and it was the only noise at the end.
Match16 Sep 2034
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Abdel Rachid Zagré. 1‑0 against Latina, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings18 Sep 2034
Marked 7.77. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Squad18 Sep 2034
Ravenna are still strangers to each other
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The dugout18 Sep 2034
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Interim Coach on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Market18 Sep 2034
Ravenna bring in an old head
Charles Vanhoutte is 36 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.