Cagliari interviewed the field and appointed the corridor: Interim Coach keeps the job he had been doing in all but title. Sometimes the safest pair of hands is the one already holding the wheel.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cagliari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gabriele Zappa was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Cagliari are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
1‑7 to Juventus, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Adam Obert and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Cagliari is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
8 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Cagliari and Juventus in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yerry Mina was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Sassuolo had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Cagliari can pretend not to have heard.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cagliari they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Lautaro Ávila is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cagliari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
SquadYerry Mina falls out with a teammate over standards