Marked for Pietro Burini
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad6 Sep 2038
A knee injury of the worst kind for Davide Gentile
56 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Padova lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings6 Sep 2038
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match4 Sep 2038
7 unbeaten for Padova
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 7 matches without defeat is a foundation Padova did not have in the autumn.
Squad6 Sep 2038
Mikkel Hope 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 Padova this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad6 Sep 2038
Words at Padova training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alan Lezcano 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.
Player ratings6 Sep 2038
Marked 8.19 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Squad6 Sep 2038
5 new faces, and Padova are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Match4 Sep 2038
A 1‑1 draw with Cremonese leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Market6 Sep 2038
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Padova know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom9 Aug 2038
The silence upstairs is getting loud at Padova
Nobody on the board has said anything against the manager, which is the point — they have stopped saying anything for him either.
Squad9 Aug 2038
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 17 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad9 Aug 2038
Mikkel Hope 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 Padova this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom12 Jul 2038
Pressure builds in the Padova boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Squad12 Jul 2038
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 53 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad12 Jul 2038
34 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad12 Jul 2038
Tempers go at Padova
Alan Lezcano 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.
Squad12 Jul 2038
Vadim Lukjanov 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.
Boardroom12 Jul 2038
86% of the income goes out in wages at Padova
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.
Market12 Jul 2038
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Padova know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Market12 Jul 2038
Still no signature from Tiago Costa
1 months left and the two sides are nowhere near each other. Every week this drags on takes money off what Padova could get for him.
The terraces12 Jul 2038
What was a back-page story is now a matter for the terraces, and the terraces do not do nuance. Padova would like it dealt with before it becomes the only question anybody asks.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom14 Jun 2038
The scrutiny sharpens at Padova
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Padova is running low.
Squad14 Jun 2038
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Padova may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad14 Jun 2038
Francesco Piazza is the young player of the season
Not a month, not a run of form — a whole season of being the best 20-year-old anybody in this division could put on a pitch. This is the honour that gets mentioned for the rest of his career.
Squad14 Jun 2038
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 16 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
Squad14 Jun 2038
Alan Lezcano 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.
Market14 Jun 2038
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Davide Gentile’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad16 Nov 2037
There were 10 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Player ratings16 Nov 2037
No sign of nerves from Francesco Piazza at 19 — 8.99
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Francesco Piazza did not need any: 8.99, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Boardroom16 Nov 2037
Padova counting the cost
The accounts make uncomfortable reading. Wages first and ambition second is the order of business at Padova now.
Squad16 Nov 2037
He is 19, he is averaging 7.29, and older professionals have started passing to him in the difficult minutes. That last part is the real scouting report.
Squad16 Nov 2037
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Padova may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad16 Nov 2037
Tempers go at Padova
Mikkel Hope 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 terraces16 Nov 2037
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 19-year-old it feels ownership of. Francesco Piazza has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Match14 Nov 2037
Padova get the job done against Cesena
A 1‑0 win over Cesena, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings16 Nov 2037
14 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad23 Feb 2037
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad23 Feb 2037
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Padova will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match21 Feb 2037
Padova leaking at the back
8 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.
Squad23 Feb 2037
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Padova may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad23 Feb 2037
Defences have started doubling up on Mikkel Hope
11 goals and a season average of 7.54 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Market23 Feb 2037
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Filippo Visentin will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Padova the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Player ratings23 Feb 2037
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match21 Feb 2037
Padova come up short against Pisa
Pisa left with the points after a 2‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Player ratings23 Feb 2037
Marked 8.73 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.