It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sampdoria this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Squad29 Nov 2027
Words at Sampdoria training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mattia Viti 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.
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.
The fixture the calendar is arranged around. Form goes out of the window, the table is not consulted, and for ninety minutes Sampdoria will be judged on one thing only.
The dugout29 Nov 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Enrico Ferrari to a room that had heard them before.
Two goals and a mark of 9.07 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
0 on the scoresheet on his first appearance and a mark of 7.78 beside it. Most debuts are got through; this one was enjoyed, by him and by everybody watching it.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Sampdoria and Casarano, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Mattia Viti 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.
He is 22 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Sampdoria asked and Sassuolo said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Words at Sampdoria training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bjorn Meijer 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.
Squad9 Aug 2027
12 new faces, and Sampdoria 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.
Sampdoria have made the call to Unionistas. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Sampdoria will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.