32 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Virtus Verona lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 9.22 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Virtus Verona will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
“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 The request is on a desk at Virtus Verona, and it is not being withdrawn.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Riccardo Lodovici is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
The mood at Virtus Verona has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Udinese keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
$100.0K on the table at Hellas Verona. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Sergio Kalaj 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 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.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Arezzo had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
The clubs have shaken hands with Arzignano; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Monza had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Pergolettese, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Matteo Pessina 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.
Squad12 Jul 2027
Andrea Carboni has improved at 26, 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrea Carboni 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.
“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 Virtus Verona, and it is not being withdrawn.
Sergio Kalaj 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.
Virtus Verona asked and Empoli said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Vincenzo Bertoni has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Ruggero Villa is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
In brief
Squad7 new faces, and Virtus Verona are still learning each other
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Giacomo Sartori has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and AlbinoLeffe waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Virtus Verona is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
The deal with Monza is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.