Marked for Patrick De Ligt
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match3 Mar 2035
No end in sight to Cagliari's wait for a win
10 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Cagliari has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad5 Mar 2035
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Market5 Mar 2035
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Daniil Paroutis will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cagliari the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Player ratings5 Mar 2035
Milutin Osmajić, 35, rolls back the years — 8.07
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.07 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market5 Mar 2035
Éderson wants to know where this is going
“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 Cagliari hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Market5 Mar 2035
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad5 Mar 2035
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Milutin Osmajić and Cagliari agree another 2 years.
Squad5 Mar 2035
Milutin Osmajić 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.
Match3 Mar 2035
Cagliari are shipping goals every week
Two or more conceded in each of the last 4 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match1 Nov 2034
Cup progress for Cagliari
A 1‑0 win over Trapani, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Market6 Nov 2034
Only the photograph left for Mirko Zorzi
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mirko Zorzi will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cagliari the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Player ratings6 Nov 2034
A debut Michele Ferrari will not forget — 7.76
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 0 on the scoresheet, 7.76 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
Squad6 Nov 2034
A one-man rearguard from Mirko Zorzi
There were 7 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 ratings6 Nov 2034
Milutin Osmajić, 35, rolls back the years — 7.96
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.96 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The dugout6 Nov 2034
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Cagliari may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad6 Nov 2034
Éderson 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.
Squad6 Nov 2034
Tommaso Montano makes the wrong kind of headline
Dealt with internally, which is the phrase a club uses when it would rather nobody asked twice. He will be fined, he will apologise, and he will play on Saturday.
Squad6 Nov 2034
500 games in these colours. Service of that kind gets rarer every season, and the crowd knows it.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad24 Jul 2034
Orazio Brambilla damages knee ligaments — 29 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 29 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.
Market24 Jul 2034
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Juve Stabia waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Cagliari is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market24 Jul 2034
“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 Cagliari, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market24 Jul 2034
Only the photograph left for Carlos Harvey
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Carlos Harvey will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cagliari the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad24 Jul 2034
Words exchanged at Cagliari
Fikayo Tomori 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.
Market24 Jul 2034
The chase for Karim Hamadou ended with $510.0K changing hands and Atalanta out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Transfer targets24 Jul 2034
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.
Squad24 Jul 2034
Éderson 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.
Squad24 Jul 2034
At 32 the improving is meant to be over, and it is not: 3 points better than a year ago. It happens to the ones who take the boring parts seriously.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad3 Jul 2034
50 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cagliari lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Market3 Jul 2034
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Cagliari people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Market3 Jul 2034
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cagliari they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market3 Jul 2034
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market3 Jul 2034
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Filippo Colombo had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Squad3 Jul 2034
Milutin Osmajić 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.
Boardroom3 Jul 2034
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Squad3 Jul 2034
Words at Cagliari training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Éderson 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.
Squad3 Jul 2034
At 20 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match28 Jan 2034
Chastening afternoon for Cagliari
A 1‑4 beating by Juve Stabia was the sort of result that empties a stadium long before the final whistle.
Market30 Jan 2034
“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 Cagliari, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market30 Jan 2034
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Milutin Osmajić will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cagliari the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Transfer targets30 Jan 2034
The deal with Stade Rennais is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Squad30 Jan 2034
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cagliari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad30 Jan 2034
Éderson 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.
Transfer targets30 Jan 2034
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.
Squad30 Jan 2034
A move Patrick De Ligt would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Patrick De Ligt is living that version at Cagliari, and it tends to show in the first month.
Boardroom30 Jan 2034
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.