Simone Batistini

Attacking Midfielder (R) - Catania
14 May 2030
Tuesday
Process

Marked for Simone Batistini

196 Edition

The Catania Sentinel

29 Apr 2030
From our football correspondent Uneasy

Squad

Kaleb Jimenez honoured for the season

The kind of year that ends with a name being read out in a hall. Catania had the benefit of it every week and now have the problem of everybody else knowing.

The dugout

Roman Gribovskiy says Catania went back on their word

“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.

Market

Only the photograph left for Lorenzo Mezzotero

Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Lorenzo Mezzotero will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Catania the goodbyes have quietly begun.

Squad

Tempers go at Catania

Braian Cuello 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.

Squad

Gino Podestá 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.

The dugout

Simone Batistini gets it from the manager

“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.

The dugout

Andrea Lombari knocks on the manager’s door

“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Andrea Lombari trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.

Market

The shop window has Zain Tahir in it

Catania have let the market know Zain Tahir can be had. No price in the advert, but everyone in the trade knows roughly what it says.

Boardroom

Catania keep producing them

30 graduates from an academy now rated 9 out of 20. A club this size does not survive any other way, and every name on that list is known in the town.

In brief