Marked for Marco Vanzini
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Jun 2028
Pedro Cacho breaks a bone — 62 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 62 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market19 Jun 2028
“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 The request is on a desk at Mosta, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad19 Jun 2028
Akpan Udoh 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 Mosta this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad20 Mar 2028
Jayden Farrugia damages knee ligaments — 17 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 17 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.
Market20 Mar 2028
“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 The request is on a desk at Mosta, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad20 Mar 2028
Tempers go at Mosta
Akpan Udoh 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market7 Feb 2028
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Azer Kozić reports back to Mosta with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Squad7 Feb 2028
“The easiest signature of my career.” Mohamed Awad and Mosta agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Tempers go at Mosta
Akpan Udoh 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.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Words at Mosta training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mohamed Awad 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.
Squad7 Feb 2028
“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.
Market7 Feb 2028
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Prince Chibuzor Emmanuel’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match23 Aug 2027
Agia Napa sink to position 14
16 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Market23 Aug 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Agia Napa can pretend not to have heard.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Sakhalou Niakaté is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad23 Aug 2027
A move Marco Vanzini 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. Marco Vanzini is living that version at Mosta, and it tends to show in the first month.
The terraces23 Aug 2027
Mosta sell a favourite for $120.0K
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Anse Ngoubi was one of the reasons people came, and $120.0K does not replace that by itself.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jake Vassallo is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Tempers go at Mosta
Prince Chibuzor Emmanuel 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.
Squad23 Aug 2027
A late step up for Giancarlo
At 27 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Market23 Aug 2027
Business is business: Anse Ngoubi goes
Floriana paid $120.0K and Mosta took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match8 Feb 2027
Agia Napa sink to position 14
15 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Squad8 Feb 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Modestos Sotiriou
20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Agia Napa lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market8 Feb 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Agia Napa can pretend not to have heard.
Squad8 Feb 2027
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Agia Napa are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Marius Refsnes 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.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Kimberly Ezekwem 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.
Match6 Feb 2027
Nea Salamis left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
5.78 on the card. Some afternoons a footballer looks like a man who has only just been introduced to the game, and this was one of them.
In brief
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Player ratings
Ola Kamara could not find anything
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Market
The window shut and Marco Vanzini is still in the building