Marked for Youssef Mahrani
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad10 May 2027
97 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Carpi lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Market10 May 2027
Only the photograph left for Abdoulaye Sall
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Abdoulaye Sall will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Carpi the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The dugout10 May 2027
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Carpi have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad10 May 2027
A falling-out at Carpi
Rodrick Tcheuna and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout10 May 2027
The manager makes an example of Nicolò Verza
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout10 May 2027
Matteo Rossini knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Carpi, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad26 Apr 2027
Leonardo Stanzani damages knee ligaments — 112 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 112 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.
Squad26 Apr 2027
Tempers go at Carpi
Davide Zagnoni 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.
Squad26 Apr 2027
Rodrick Tcheuna falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The dugout26 Apr 2027
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
The dugout26 Apr 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout26 Apr 2027
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
The dugout26 Apr 2027
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Leonardo Morosini trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market26 Apr 2027
The Matteo Sorzi talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Carpi know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Market26 Apr 2027
Carpi have let the market know Abdoulaye Sall can be had. No price in the advert, but everyone in the trade knows roughly what it says.