Elliott Delay

Right Back - Siracusa
19 Dec 2032
Sunday
Process

Marked for Elliott Delay

316 Edition

The Siracusa Courier

16 Aug 2032
From our football correspondent Crisis

Squad

The knee: Vital Maia out for 23 days

23 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Siracusa lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.

Market

Vital Maia puts it in writing

“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 The request is on a desk at Siracusa, and it is not being withdrawn.

Squad

Paolo Zanetti breaks a bone — 17 days out

Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 17 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.

Squad

The step up is real for Ralf Kuhn

At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.

Squad

A falling-out at Siracusa

Antonino Viola and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.

The dugout

The manager has not finished forgetting Marko Pavić's mistake

Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.

The dugout

Flamur Ruçi 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 Flamur Ruçi trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.

Market

The Angelo Guida story refuses to die

It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Angelo Guida signs something — a contract at Siracusa or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.

Market

Still no ink between Siracusa and Elliott Delay

“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Siracusa, another week without a signature from Elliott Delay.

In brief

Back issues
314 Edition

The Siracusa Courier

2 Aug 2032
From our football correspondent Crisis

Boardroom

Siracusa put Interim Coach on notice

The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.

Match

Every point is an argument now for Siracusa

Position 17 and 26 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.

Boardroom

Emergency meeting at Siracusa

The whole football department in one room on a weekday morning. Nothing was announced afterwards, which is what a board announces when it has run out of patience.

Squad

Paolo Zanetti breaks a bone — 31 days out

Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 31 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.

Market

Nicolò Serra puts it in writing

“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 Siracusa, and it is not being withdrawn.

Squad

Elliott Delay gets the move he always wanted

Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Elliott Delay has just signed for Siracusa, and for once the answer mattered.

Squad

Vital Maia 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 Siracusa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.

Squad

A row about effort at Siracusa

Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Davide Bettella was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.

Boardroom

$929.2K from the owner keeps Siracusa afloat

The gap in the accounts was filled from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be grateful and to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings arrive together.

In brief