Marked for Alexander Odegaard
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market25 Jul 2033
Lecce come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Pescara did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market25 Jul 2033
“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.
Market25 Jul 2033
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Matvey Gorbunov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Pescara the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Boardroom25 Jul 2033
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Nils Ekdal has agreed terms with Pisa for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad25 Jul 2033
Matías Moreno 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.
Squad25 Jul 2033
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings15 Nov 2032
A brace, and Antonio Di Nardo takes the afternoon — 8.45
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Antonio Di Nardo provided it, and the 8.45 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Squad15 Nov 2032
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market15 Nov 2032
“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.
Market15 Nov 2032
Only the photograph left for Julian Brandes
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Julian Brandes will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Pescara the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Match13 Nov 2032
No end in sight to Pescara's wait for a win
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Pescara has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad15 Nov 2032
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pescara this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad15 Nov 2032
Matías Moreno 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.
Squad15 Nov 2032
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Alexander Odegaard has just signed for Pescara, and for once the answer mattered.
Match13 Nov 2032
Honours even between Pescara and Como
2‑2, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.