The Spezia Gazette
Match12 Nov 2039
13 matches without a win for Spezia
The run now stands at 13, and the questions being asked around Spezia are no longer polite ones.
Squad14 Nov 2039
A knee injury of the worst kind for Tygo Grotenhuis
54 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Spezia lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match14 Nov 2039
Every point is an argument now for Spezia
Position 19 and 8 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Market14 Nov 2039
Dawid Lewandowski hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Spezia can pretend not to have heard.
Market14 Nov 2039
Amur Balkizov is on his way
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Spezia is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad14 Nov 2039
Tempers go at Spezia
Diego Pellegrini 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.
Squad14 Nov 2039
Andrea Santarcangelo 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.
Player ratings14 Nov 2039
Maat Daniel Caprini runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 18. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad14 Nov 2039
Home is on Zdravko Grudev's mind
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Spezia are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
In brief
- Boardroom 85% of the income goes out in wages at Spezia
- Match Spezia share the spoils with Carrarese
- Market Ivan Kovac told to find a new club