Marked for Facundo Piozzi
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad23 Jul 2029
A fracture rules Gabriele Zappa out for 74 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cagliari will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Transfer targets23 Jul 2029
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Cagliari have done the hard part with Bologna, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
The dugout23 Jul 2029
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Cagliari have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad23 Jul 2029
At 22 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.
Squad23 Jul 2029
A falling-out at Cagliari
Yerry Mina and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad23 Jul 2029
At 24 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 4 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.
Transfer targets23 Jul 2029
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
The dugout23 Jul 2029
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
The dugout23 Jul 2029
Enzo Ebosse gets it from the manager
“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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Transfer targets15 Jan 2029
Cagliari and Torino have settled on $5.0M. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Player ratings15 Jan 2029
Successful dribbles: 32. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Match15 Jan 2029
50 points and nobody above them. The word is not being said around the ground yet, and it is being thought in every seat.
Market15 Jan 2029
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Cagliari have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Market15 Jan 2029
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Cagliari can pretend not to have heard.
Transfer targets15 Jan 2029
Cagliari had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Catanzaro, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Squad15 Jan 2029
Yerry Mina 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.
Transfer targets15 Jan 2029
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Venezia have kept their man, and Cagliari go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Match13 Jan 2029
Hellas Verona made Cagliari work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad24 Apr 2028
31 goals and a season average of 7.56 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Player ratings24 Apr 2028
Zito Luvumbo beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 35. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad24 Apr 2028
Yerry Mina 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 Cagliari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad24 Apr 2028
A row about effort at Cagliari
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gabriele Zappa was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The terraces24 Apr 2028
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Match22 Apr 2028
Three points for Cagliari, 2‑0 the final word against Cremonese in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Player ratings24 Apr 2028
Marked 8.14. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Cagliari.
Player ratings24 Apr 2028
A performance of 8.09 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
The dugout24 Apr 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Alen Sherri, and the manager let it.
In brief
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The dugout
The view from the dugout
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Squad
The division's best last weekend was a Cagliari man
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The dugout
Yerry Mina left out for tactical reasons at Cagliari