Marked for Matthew Hayden
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match14 Aug 2028
Cavese refuse to drop out of the race
Position 1, 68 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Matthew Hayden is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad14 Aug 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cavese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Giuseppe Fella has improved at 35, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Giuseppe Fella 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.
Market14 Aug 2028
The name of Lucas Chacana keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Cavese say nothing, which says plenty.
In brief
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Boardroom
The Cavese production line keeps running
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Boardroom
Cavese board back the manager
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad10 Jul 2028
Matthew Hayden: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Cavese have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad10 Jul 2028
Vincenzo Damiano is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad10 Jul 2028
Words at Cavese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giuseppe Fella 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad19 Jul 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Cavese may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad19 Jul 2027
Alexis Busin 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 Cavese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Jul 2027
Words at Cavese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giuseppe Fella 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad31 May 2027
Matthew Hayden: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Cavese have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market31 May 2027
Mattia Macchi has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cavese they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad31 May 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cavese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
The terraces12 Apr 2027
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 8 of the 30 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Tempers go at Cavese
Alessandro Lamesta 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.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Alessio Luciani 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.
Match10 Apr 2027
A bad afternoon for Cavese against Foggia
0‑2 to Foggia, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad12 Apr 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Davide Munari, and the manager let it.
Loan watch12 Apr 2027
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Cavese, and 0 appearances in 13 say he has earned the hearing.
Player ratings12 Apr 2027
Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad12 Apr 2027
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.
Player ratings12 Apr 2027
Shots: 4, enough of them from close enough that a striker in form scores two. He is not a striker in form.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match6 Feb 2027
The wait goes on for Cavese
5 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.
Market8 Feb 2027
Only the photograph left for Mattia Macchi
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mattia Macchi will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cavese the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad8 Feb 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cavese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Words at Cavese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giuseppe Fella 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.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Shots: 11, not one of them in. A centre forward is paid for one thing, and on this evidence he has forgotten which thing it is.
Squad8 Feb 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Tom Negrel, and the manager let it.
Squad8 Feb 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Gerardo Fusco and Cavese agree another 3 years.
Match6 Feb 2027
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Market8 Feb 2027
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Cavese, another week without a signature from Matthew Hayden.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
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 Cavese, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad25 Jan 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Cavese may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market25 Jan 2027
Elios Minaj has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cavese they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad25 Jan 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cavese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad25 Jan 2027
A move Luca Martinazzi would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Luca Martinazzi is living that version at Cavese, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Words at Cavese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giuseppe Fella 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.
Match23 Jan 2027
0‑2 to Benevento, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Boardroom25 Jan 2027
91% of the income goes out in wages at Cavese
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.
Market25 Jan 2027
Ayuub Abdulle is 20, and Cavese 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.