“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 The request is on a desk at Cremonese, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Davide Pavesi is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Jari Vandeputte 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.
5 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Squad13 Dec 2027
Words at Cremonese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrea Fulignati 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Andrea Fulignati was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cremonese know it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Jari Vandeputte signs something — a contract at Cremonese or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against AS Roma in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Felix Afena-Gyan has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Cremonese heard it as anything else.
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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Aassim Farah 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.
In brief
BoardroomWages eat 87% of everything Cremonese earn
“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 Cremonese, and it is not being withdrawn.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Andrea Fulignati was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. AS Roma have kept their man, and Cremonese go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Cremonese can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Cremonese will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
Nobody at Cremonese will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Giuseppe Pezzella trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The last league game has been played and the table has stopped moving: 73 points. The summer begins on Monday, and so does the argument about what it all meant.
“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 Cremonese, and it is not being withdrawn.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Cremonese hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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.
Cremonese asked and Lazio said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The name of Salvatore Elia has come up in conversations Cremonese were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cremonese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 18 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.
Something was said to Youssef Maleh and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Mikayil Faye is on it.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Youssef Maleh trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Hellas Verona in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.