Marked for Gerardo Solazzo
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad6 Nov 2028
32 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Potenza lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Match1 Nov 2028
Potenza out of the cup
Cagliari ended it 1‑3. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Match6 Nov 2028
Potenza refuse to drop out of the race
Position 3, 15 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Player ratings6 Nov 2028
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.88 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market6 Nov 2028
Only the photograph left for Tobías Córdoba
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Tobías Córdoba will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Potenza the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Player ratings6 Nov 2028
Successful dribbles: 23. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad6 Nov 2028
“The easiest signature of my career.” Simone Magnaghi and Potenza agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Match4 Nov 2028
The drought breaks for Potenza
6 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Altamura were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
Squad6 Nov 2028
Luca Petrungaro 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad29 May 2028
Marco Balzano damages knee ligaments — 25 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 25 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad29 May 2028
24 days out for Gianni Manfrin after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Potenza will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Market29 May 2028
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Potenza can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Squad29 May 2028
Davide Veroli 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.
Squad29 May 2028
Luca Petrungaro 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.
The dugout29 May 2028
“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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad22 May 2028
Marco Balzano damages knee ligaments — 32 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 32 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad22 May 2028
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 32 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The dugout22 May 2028
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Market22 May 2028
Only the photograph left for Tobías Córdoba
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Tobías Córdoba will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Potenza the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad22 May 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Potenza this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 May 2028
A row about effort at Potenza
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Luca Petrungaro was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout22 May 2028
Hebert 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.
The dugout22 May 2028
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
The dugout22 May 2028
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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match28 Jun 2027
Potenza refuse to drop out of the race
Position 3, 57 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Transfer targets28 Jun 2027
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Potenza have done the hard part with Atalanta, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Squad28 Jun 2027
A row about effort at Potenza
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yuri Rocchetti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets28 Jun 2027
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.
Transfer targets28 Jun 2027
A loan enquiry to Genoa: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
The dugout28 Jun 2027
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 Tobías Córdoba is on it.
Squad28 Jun 2027
Pedro Paulo has had enough of the bench
“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 Potenza will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
The dugout28 Jun 2027
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.
Market28 Jun 2027
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Claud Adjapong’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.