Marked for Jacob Green
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match10 Jan 2028
Reggiana sink to position 18
19 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Market10 Jan 2028
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Reggiana can pretend not to have heard.
Match8 Jan 2028
6 matches without a win for Reggiana
The run now stands at 6, and the questions being asked around Reggiana are no longer polite ones.
Squad10 Jan 2028
Matteo Rover 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.
Squad10 Jan 2028
Davide Bartesaghi 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.
Boardroom10 Jan 2028
Catania will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Andrea Rizzotti has pre-agreed a move to Reggiana, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Match8 Jan 2028
Padova left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad10 Jan 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.
Player ratings10 Jan 2028
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.00, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Pergolettese can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Market2 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 Pergolettese can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
The Pergolettese board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Squad2 Aug 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pergolettese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Aug 2027
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.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Squad2 Aug 2027
The manager's exit leaves Ettore Quirini exposed
Every squad has men who were signed by a particular manager and men who were merely inherited. Ettore Quirini is in the first group, and the man who wanted him here is no longer in the building.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
Pergolettese pull $104.7K back off the table
The money that was there in the summer is not there now. Nobody upstairs calls this a change of ambition, and everybody downstairs reads it as one.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
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.
Squad2 Aug 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Reggiana may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
The Reggiana board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Matteo Rover 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.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Leo Begolli is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Market2 Aug 2027
Business is business: Paolo Rozzio goes
Novara paid $330.0K and Reggiana took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Words at Reggiana training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Natan Girma 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.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Jacob Green has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Reggiana have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
Reggiana pull $232.2K back off the table
The money that was there in the summer is not there now. Nobody upstairs calls this a change of ambition, and everybody downstairs reads it as one.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad11 Jan 2027
Andrea Padalino damages knee ligaments — 93 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 93 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.
Market11 Jan 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
The terraces11 Jan 2027
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 9 of the 30 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Tomi Petrovic: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Pergolettese have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Etienne Catena is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad11 Jan 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pergolettese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match9 Jan 2027
Beaten 1‑3, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Market11 Jan 2027
He is 19, and nobody at Pergolettese signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Market11 Jan 2027
He is 19, and nobody at Pergolettese signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.