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.
4 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Cavese can tell you which week it ends in.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Words at Cavese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leonardo Graziani 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.
Noah Nemorin 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.
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.52 on the card, and the Cavese support went home talking about one name.
The dugout22 Nov 2027
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Giorgio Amato was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Cavese dressing room was either.
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Santiago Montaña 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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Denny Pucci, and the manager let it.
The dugout4 Oct 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Giorgio Amato to a room that had heard them before.
In brief
SquadA place in the month's best eleven for Elia Visconti
“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 The request is on a desk at Cavese, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Elios Minaj will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cavese the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Juve Stabia have kept their man, and Cavese go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Gabriele Colletti has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Alfonso Guerra is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
“I watch every Cavese game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Pescara runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
In brief
BoardroomCavese say no to the training-ground money
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Cavese is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The phone has started ringing about Leonardo Ubaldi again, and this time the name on the line is Catania. Cavese are listening politely and promising nothing.
$130.0K on the table at Catanzaro. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 36 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Cavese is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Santiago Montaña was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Noah Nemorin 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.
Noah Nemorin 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Leonardo Ubaldi trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
The language has come, the shrug has gone, and he argues in training like a man who expects to be here next year. None of it shows up on a fee and all of it shows up on the pitch.
A few words of the language, a friend at the next peg, and a training ground that has stopped feeling foreign. Nothing measurable, and everything visible on Saturdays.
Everybody at Cavese saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 37 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Words at Cavese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leonardo Graziani 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 most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Cavese will quote 15 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Giorgio Amato after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cavese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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.
Boardroom1 Feb 2027
Deadline passes with 0 signed and 0 gone
That is the business done at Cavese until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Daniel Denoon is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Tobias Slotsager 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.
Successful dribbles: 18. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Giorgio Amato left the room before anybody could ask which.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Giuseppe Fella’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Cavese needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cavese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Francesco Orlando has come out of that comparison in the side, and Cavese have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.