Marked for Michael Phillips
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Boardroom5 Jan 2037
Interim Coach has until the next board meeting
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Pineto can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Player ratings5 Jan 2037
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.14, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad5 Jan 2037
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market5 Jan 2037
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Pineto they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad5 Jan 2037
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Gianluca Germinario and Pineto agree another 2 years.
Squad5 Jan 2037
Tempers go at Pineto
Gianluca Germinario 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 Jan 2037
Carpi made Pineto work for it, but the scoreboard read 3‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad5 Jan 2037
Words at Pineto training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gils Gíslason 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.
Boardroom5 Jan 2037
$1.0M of the owner's money at Pineto
The shortfall was covered from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be relieved and entitled to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings usually arrive together.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom8 Dec 2036
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Market8 Dec 2036
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Pineto they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad8 Dec 2036
Tempers go at Pineto
Gianluca Germinario 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.
Match6 Dec 2036
Whatever happens, Pineto do not lose
6 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Boardroom8 Dec 2036
$1.1M of the owner's money at Pineto
The shortfall was covered from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be relieved and entitled to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings usually arrive together.
Player ratings8 Dec 2036
Maxim Kulik was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.13. 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.
Squad8 Dec 2036
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Giovanni Chiricallo, and the manager let it.
Squad8 Dec 2036
Filip Salković 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 ratings8 Dec 2036
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.12, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad10 Nov 2036
Edoardo Menicucci damages knee ligaments — 28 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 28 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.
Player ratings10 Nov 2036
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.70 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market10 Nov 2036
“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.
Market10 Nov 2036
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Michael Phillips will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Pineto the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad10 Nov 2036
Tempers go at Pineto
Gianluca Germinario 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.
Player ratings10 Nov 2036
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 22 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Squad10 Nov 2036
Words at Pineto training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gils Gíslason 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.
Squad10 Nov 2036
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Pineto know it.
Match8 Nov 2036
A 1‑0 win over Guidonia Montecelio, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.