A 2‑1 win over Sassuolo, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Rayan Atikallah, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.94
A mark of 8.94 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Edoardo Duca 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.
Guillaume Furrer 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 a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Lorenzo Romani has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Lecco can pretend not to have heard.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Rayan Atikallah did not need any: 7.67, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“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; Lecco are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Edoardo Duca 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Ismaël Konaté will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Lecco escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Rayan Atikallah did not need any: 8.29, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Luca Marrone 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 20 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guillaume Furrer 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.
Marked 8.05 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Edoardo Duca 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
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 young player of the month award goes to a 20-year-old at Lecco who has looked like the finished article for four weekends running. The next four are the ones that decide whether he is.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 18 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 1 on the scoresheet, 8.11 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Ismaël Konaté will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Lecco escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Ismaël Konaté, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.89
A mark of 7.89 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Rayan Atikallah has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guillaume Furrer 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.
Lorenzo Lancellotti 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AZ this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
23 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kees Smit 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.
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Troy Parrott
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Troy Parrott has come out of that comparison in the side, and AZ have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lecco this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Oliver Urso 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.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Lecco know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 16 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.