The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Benevento is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Davide 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.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Frederik Kristensen has agreed terms with Hellas Verona for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad19 Jul 2038
Words at Benevento training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christian Kouan 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Benevento know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Two goals and a mark of 8.49 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Benevento have had the benefit of it.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.85 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.77 for the rest of it.
Davide 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.
7 goals in one match, Caleb Sanders on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Benevento and Cosenza.
Squad3 May 2038
Words at Benevento training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Elia Spicuglia 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 82 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.
Davide 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.
4 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.
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
The mood at Benevento 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Benevento will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 Benevento, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Benevento this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Kirill Skvortsov, and the manager let it.
Squad1 Jun 2037
Caleb Sanders 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 name of Christian Kouan keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Benevento say nothing, which says plenty.
The terraces1 Jun 2037
Supporters make their feelings known about Elia Spicuglia
The speculation has reached the stands, and the stands have answered. Benevento would like this settled before it becomes the only thing anybody asks about.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Kirill Skvortsov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Benevento the goodbyes have quietly begun.
1 for Ihor Boichuk, marked 7.87, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Benevento this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
7 goals in one match, Ihor Boichuk on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Benevento and Sorrento.
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.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Davide 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.
Squad20 Oct 2036
Words at Benevento training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Elia Spicuglia 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Benevento know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Nobody at Benevento will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
In brief
BoardroomThe Benevento production line keeps running
MarketThe clock does Caleb Sanders’s negotiating for him