A brace, and Eljon Toci takes the afternoon — 8.89
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Eljon Toci provided it, and the 8.89 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Eljon Toci. 2‑0 against Perugia, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Tommaso Maressa 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Interim Coach on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Mattia Leoncini 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.
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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
15 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
The dugout9 Oct 2028
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Interim Coach chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Riccardo Sganzerla trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Bra will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Iván López did not need any: 8.44, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bra can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bra have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Enrico Baldini 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.