Filippo Faggi 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.
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.
Squad1 Feb 2027
The division's best last weekend was a Pontedera man
It is a small honour and it is not nothing: somebody watched every match in the division and decided that Herculano Nabian was the best thing in any of them.
There were 86 minutes on the clock and Perugia had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and Pontedera did not stop to explain themselves.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Herculano Nabian provided it, and the 8.55 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Umberto Saracco 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.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Sanasi Sy 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 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Pontedera know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pontedera this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Pontedera training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sanasi Sy is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Umberto Saracco knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.
The unbeaten run reaches 8. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Sanasi Sy 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pontedera this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 17 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
The words a physio says slowly. 67 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.
Umberto Saracco 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Sanasi Sy 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.