Marked for Marcus Augustinsson
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad26 May 2042
A fracture rules Filip Janssen out for 114 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sambenedettese will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market26 May 2042
Vedran Majer 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 Sambenedettese can pretend not to have heard.
Squad26 May 2042
Francesco Scafetta 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.
Boardroom26 May 2042
149% of the income goes out in wages at Sambenedettese
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Boardroom26 May 2042
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
Squad26 May 2042
Valerio Bianco 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad5 May 2042
A fracture rules Filip Janssen out for 135 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sambenedettese will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Boardroom5 May 2042
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.
Boardroom5 May 2042
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Squad5 May 2042
A season's verdict on Sergio Grassi: the best of his age
Sambenedettese have a 18-year-old the division has just voted its finest young footballer. The club's next problem is that everybody else now knows it too.
Squad5 May 2042
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Sambenedettese will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Market5 May 2042
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sambenedettese can pretend not to have heard.
Squad5 May 2042
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sambenedettese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom5 May 2042
$609.9K of the owner's money at Sambenedettese
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.
Market5 May 2042
Sergio Grassi comes back from a loan that worked
25 appearances and 6 goals away from here, and a player the manager did not have in August. Loans are sent out hoping for exactly this and most of them do not deliver it.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Boardroom7 Apr 2042
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 Sambenedettese can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Boardroom7 Apr 2042
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Squad7 Apr 2042
604 appearances across 17 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Match7 Apr 2042
Position 3 and 52 points on the board. Nobody at the ground will say the word out loud yet, and everybody at the ground is thinking it.
Player ratings7 Apr 2042
Emanuele Modugno, 34, rolls back the years — 7.86
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.86 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market7 Apr 2042
“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 Sambenedettese, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad7 Apr 2042
Defences have started doubling up on Emanuele Modugno
19 goals and a season average of 7.24 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Boardroom7 Apr 2042
$353.5K of the owner's money at Sambenedettese
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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad10 Mar 2042
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sambenedettese will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match8 Mar 2042
Perugia left with the points after a 1‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad10 Mar 2042
Francesco Scafetta 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.
Boardroom10 Mar 2042
Football clubs borrow; that is not the story. Borrowing more than the facility allows is, because from here it is the owner's money or somebody else's decision, and neither of those belongs to the board.
Squad10 Mar 2042
“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; Sambenedettese are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad10 Mar 2042
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sambenedettese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market10 Mar 2042
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sambenedettese know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Loan watch10 Mar 2042
The goals keep arriving from Sergio Grassi’s exile
6 goals in 21 games at Lumezzane — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Sambenedettese updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Player ratings10 Mar 2042
Successful dribbles: 9. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match15 Feb 2042
Casper Norgaard had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Torres were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
Squad17 Feb 2042
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sambenedettese will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad17 Feb 2042
Filip Janssen: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sambenedettese have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market17 Feb 2042
“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.
Player ratings17 Feb 2042
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match15 Feb 2042
No clean sheets in sight for Sambenedettese
5 games now with at least two against. The back line has been rearranged, the goalkeeper has been backed publicly, and the goals keep going in anyway.
Match15 Feb 2042
2‑3 to Torres, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad17 Feb 2042
Words at Sambenedettese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Francesco Scafetta 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.
Squad17 Feb 2042
Vilmos Jován in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sambenedettese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad20 Jan 2042
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sambenedettese will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings20 Jan 2042
Emanuele Modugno, 34, rolls back the years — 7.83
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.83 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market20 Jan 2042
“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 Sambenedettese, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad20 Jan 2042
Francesco Scafetta 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.
Squad20 Jan 2042
A muscle injury sidelines Martim Silva for 19 days
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Sambenedettese will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Squad20 Jan 2042
A defender's mistake gets tidied up by somebody else; a goalkeeper's ends up in the net. He knew before the ball crossed the line, and so did everybody in the ground.
Market20 Jan 2042
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Sambenedettese will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad23 Dec 2041
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 109 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings23 Dec 2041
A defender's goal wins it for Sambenedettese — 7.91
1 for Vedran Majer, marked 7.91, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Squad23 Dec 2041
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sambenedettese have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Player ratings23 Dec 2041
Joao Reis runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad23 Dec 2041
Francesco Scafetta 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.
Squad23 Dec 2041
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Match21 Dec 2041
It needed Vedran Majer to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Pontedera, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Market23 Dec 2041
Experience through the door at Sambenedettese
Guilherme Cardoso arrives at 37 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.
Market23 Dec 2041
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sambenedettese know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom8 Jul 2041
Four paragraphs on the club website, none of them about football. The board thanked him, wished him well, and had the search under way before the page went up.
Boardroom8 Jul 2041
The coaching staff has emptied out entirely and there was nobody internal to promote, so the club has appointed a name almost none of its supporters will recognise. Clubs recover from this; none of them enjoy explaining it.
Boardroom8 Jul 2041
“Somebody picks the team on Saturday. This week it is me, and that is as far as I have thought.” No promises were made in either direction, which is how these usually begin.
Market8 Jul 2041
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Sambenedettese is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad8 Jul 2041
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Francesco Scafetta and Sambenedettese agree another 3 years.
Squad8 Jul 2041
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Orazio Peretti is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad8 Jul 2041
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sambenedettese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom8 Jul 2041
$977.5K of the owner's money at Sambenedettese
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.
Squad8 Jul 2041
Dejan Ekdal 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.