0‑3 against AS Roma, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
The terraces1 Nov 2027
Sorrento are taken apart by AS Roma — and the town wants answers
It finished 0-3. A cup exit is a disappointment; this was a public dismantling, and the difference between the two is the number of people who will still be talking about it in August.
Leonardo Capezzi 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.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.29, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings1 Nov 2027
Bernat Guiu was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.10. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Francesco Fusco 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.
“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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Noel Nigg was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Cavese in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Andrea D'Aniello will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Sorrento the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Nobody at Sorrento 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Mario Vilardi is on it.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 14 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
3‑6 to Salernitana, 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.
Two goals and a mark of 8.47 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Sorrento, and it is not being withdrawn.
The run now stands at 7, and the questions being asked around Sorrento are no longer polite ones.
The terraces9 Nov 2026
A cup hiding at Udinese leaves Sorrento explaining themselves
0-5, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
The terraces9 Nov 2026
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 6 of the 30 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sorrento have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad26 Oct 2026
8 new faces, and Sorrento 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.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Mauro Dalla Valle left the room before anybody could ask which.
Nobody at Sorrento 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.
A new face in his position, and Sean Parker suddenly has to win back what he thought he owned. Sorrento have promised nothing — clubs rarely do at this stage.
A brace, and Sean Parker takes the afternoon — 8.79
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Sean Parker provided it, and the 8.79 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sorrento can pretend not to have heard.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ciro Loreto was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑1, Mauro Dalla Valle could afford to be generous.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sorrento can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 15 signed and 9 gone
That is the business done at Sorrento until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Sorrento asked and Widzew Łódź said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Sorrento training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ciro Loreto 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.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Sorrento will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Nicolò Evangelisti has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
1 academy players handed senior numbers at Sorrento
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Talleres have kept their man, and Sorrento go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Marco Lombardi is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Sorrento have made the call to AS Saint-Etienne. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
The plan went upstairs and came back down. Nothing about that will make a headline anywhere else, and everybody who works at the training ground will remember it for years.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Casertana in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Sorrento would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
They sit in position 6 and they will be waiting. Away form is where a season shows its true character, and this side has a point to make about its own.
The word out of the training ground is that he has been the sharpest man there all week. It is the quietest story a paper carries and it usually runs the week before somebody's run in the side begins.