Marked for Assane Diao
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market17 Aug 2026
Assane Diao has left for Fiorentina in a $23.2M deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Market17 Aug 2026
Jesús Rodríguez has left for AC Milan in a $18.6M deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Market17 Aug 2026
AC Milan come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Como did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
$6.0M was the most the club would pay and Cremonese were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Market17 Aug 2026
The phone has started ringing about Nico Paz again, and this time the name on the line is Lazio. Como are listening politely and promising nothing.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
$1.3M on the table at Sassuolo. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad17 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Como this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Thomas Boccia commits to Como for another 3 years.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market17 Aug 2026
Lecce paid $16.4M and Fiorentina took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Market17 Aug 2026
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Elba Rashani had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Assane Diao arrives at the club he grew up with
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Assane Diao has, at Fiorentina, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Market17 Aug 2026
Assane Diao is 20, and Fiorentina have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Market17 Aug 2026
Cremonese come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Fiorentina did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Lazio wanted more than $1.3M and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Pote in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fiorentina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Bassidy Sanogo commits to Fiorentina for another 4 years.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Marin Pongračić 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market10 Aug 2026
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Como people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Market10 Aug 2026
Pisa come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Como did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
Como have gone to Sassuolo with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
The offer went to Venezia this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
The offer went to Fiorentina this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Market10 Aug 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Como have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Nico Paz signs on for more
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Nico Paz and Como agree another 5 years.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Tempers go at Como
Robert Sánchez 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
Everything agreed with Como, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
Fiorentina asked and Como said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Market10 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
The offer went to Lazio this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Market10 Aug 2026
David De Gea wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Fiorentina hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Mateo Pellegrino and Fiorentina agree another 5 years.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Pote 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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Words at Fiorentina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Majkol Luka 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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
7 new faces, and Fiorentina are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.