Marked for Benjamín Quevedo
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match23 Jan 2027
The 87th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Luca Petrungaro decided nobody was going anywhere. Sorrento had no time left to answer.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 28. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market25 Jan 2027
“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 The request is on a desk at Potenza, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market25 Jan 2027
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Antonino De Marco will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Potenza the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Transfer targets25 Jan 2027
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Atalanta keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Market25 Jan 2027
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Potenza have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Transfer targets25 Jan 2027
Potenza asked and AC Milan said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Match23 Jan 2027
A 2‑1 win over Sorrento, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
The terraces25 Jan 2027
He is 22 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market18 Jan 2027
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Kukësi waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Potenza is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Player ratings18 Jan 2027
Jacopo Murano, 36, rolls back the years — 7.95
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.95 at 36, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad18 Jan 2027
17 goals and a season average of 7.36. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Potenza have done the hard part with Venezia, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Squad18 Jan 2027
A row about effort at Potenza
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yuri Rocchetti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Ponferradina have kept their man, and Potenza go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Antonino De Marco 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.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
A loan enquiry to AC Milan: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
“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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match7 Dec 2026
First, on 27 points. The table is a fact and a fact is allowed to be enjoyed, which is as far as anybody at the club is prepared to go in public.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Age has not caught Jacopo Murano yet — 7.98
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.98 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad7 Dec 2026
13 goals and a season average of 7.30. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Yuri Rocchetti 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.
Match5 Dec 2026
Three points for Potenza, 2‑0 the final word against Crotone in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Match5 Dec 2026
Potenza make home a hard place to visit
8 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad7 Dec 2026
A falling-out at Potenza
Antonino De Marco and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad7 Dec 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Niko Kirwan
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Niko Kirwan has come out of that comparison in the side, and Potenza have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad26 Oct 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Giuseppe Loiacono
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Potenza lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.03, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Potenza training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuri Rocchetti 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.
Match24 Oct 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Jacopo Murano. 2‑0 against Salernitana, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad26 Oct 2026
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Potenza know it.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
“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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Potenza are still strangers to each other
6 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Renato Gamberini, on a 2‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad19 Oct 2026
28 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Potenza lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Thiago Verardi is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Potenza training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuri Rocchetti 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.
Match17 Oct 2026
Every run ends on an afternoon somebody had marked down as routine. This one went 6 matches, which is long enough that a town had stopped counting, and short enough that it will remember exactly who stopped it.
Match17 Oct 2026
Catania left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Tommaso Cucchietti, and the manager let it.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words exchanged at Potenza
Benjamín Quevedo 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.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Renato Gamberini to a room that had heard them before.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 15. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad7 Sep 2026
Giuseppe Loiacono damages knee ligaments — 72 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 72 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.
Market7 Sep 2026
“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 Potenza, and it is not being withdrawn.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 13 signed and 4 gone
That is the business done at Potenza 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.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Potenza have done the hard part with Cremonese, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Cheltenham Town have kept their man, and Potenza go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Claud Adjapong 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.
Looking ahead7 Sep 2026
Potenza take on the side everybody is chasing
Bari arrive as leaders. A side at the top is beaten roughly once a month, and the club that does it gets a week it remembers for a year.
Looking ahead7 Sep 2026
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Bari in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Potenza, and both men came out saying it was fine.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad31 Aug 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Giuseppe Loiacono
79 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Potenza lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
A brace, and Jacopo Murano takes the afternoon — 8.78
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Jacopo Murano provided it, and the 8.78 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Benjamín Quevedo has just signed for Potenza, and for once the answer mattered.
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
Potenza asked and Spezia said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The terraces31 Aug 2026
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.
Match29 Aug 2026
Three points for Potenza, 2‑0 the final word against Casarano in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Niko Kirwan reaches 200 appearances
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Squad31 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Benjamín Quevedo and Potenza agree another 3 years.
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
A loan enquiry to Ludogorets: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.