Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.08 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Giovanni Bruzzaniti 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Catania they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad30 Nov 2037
Words at Catania training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kaleb Jimenez 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Catania will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Catania they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Giovanni Bruzzaniti 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.
Squad26 Oct 2037
Words at Catania training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kaleb Jimenez 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 122 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Catania this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Aug 2037
Kaleb Jimenez 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 phone has started ringing about Pietro Bianco again, and this time the name on the line is Cavese. Catania are listening politely and promising nothing.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Catania will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The offer from Cavese for Pietro Bianco was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Catania this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Jul 2037
Kaleb Jimenez 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.
3 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Catania could ask drops and the wages Giuseppe Positano can ask rise.
In brief
BoardroomThe Catania production line keeps running
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Catania will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Catania have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Miloš Bočić 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.
Squad15 Jun 2037
Kaleb Jimenez 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 58 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Add another name to the list: Boca Juniors have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Alexander Zenti. The answer from Catania has not changed — yet.
Kaleb Jimenez 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.
Squad8 Jun 2037
Miloš Bočić 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Catania will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The words a physio says slowly. 17 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.
Giovanni Bruzzaniti 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Tiziano Cassano will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Catania the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Marked 8.92 — 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.
14 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 134 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Catania this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ivan Radonjic will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Catania the goodbyes have quietly begun.
In brief
SquadKaleb Jimenez falls out with a teammate over standards
52 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Catania lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 131 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.70 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Catania have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
8.62. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
15 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Latina, and it could have been more.
Player ratings17 Nov 2036
A brace, and Kaleb Jimenez takes the afternoon — 8.82
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Kaleb Jimenez provided it, and the 8.82 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Giovanni Bruzzaniti 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.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 24 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Jon Vidal will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Catania the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad17 Nov 2036
Words at Catania training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kaleb Jimenez 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.
20 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Catania this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad18 Aug 2036
Kaleb Jimenez 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.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Catania, and 0 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
Nobody at Catania will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Catania this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Federico Rizzi has agreed terms with Reggiana for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad21 Jul 2036
Kaleb Jimenez 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Pietro Bianco is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Nobody at Catania will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
In brief
BoardroomThe Catania production line keeps running
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Catania this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad23 Jun 2036
Kaleb Jimenez 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.