“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 The request is on a desk at Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer from Cremonese for Thijs Dallinga 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.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Bologna have lost him in all but the paperwork.
He is going to Zenit, the club has $34.6M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Boardroom6 Sep 2027
Deadline passes with 15 signed and 36 gone
That is the business done at Bologna until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
Fiorentina paid $9.4M and Bologna took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bologna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Fiorentina have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Bologna have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Two goals and a mark of 8.58 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The phone has started ringing about Lewis Ferguson again, and this time the name on the line is Zenit. Bologna are listening politely and promising nothing.
Player ratings23 Aug 2027
Up for the corner, and Juan Miranda delivers — 7.95
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Juan Miranda scored, was marked 7.95, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The board have signed the man in the dugout to a longer contract, which says more than any statement of support. Stability is easy to promise and costly to keep.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Bologna will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
The bid was some way short and Bologna did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad16 Aug 2027
23 new faces, and Bologna are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“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 Bologna, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Kevin Bonifazi has his answer from Bologna; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Bologna know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Nobody writes a headline about a tutor. Nobody has to be told, either, what happens to a signing who spends two years being the man nobody can talk to at lunch.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Bologna will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Kevin Bonifazi reports back to Bologna with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
24 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Bologna know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Torbjørn Heggem trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nobody at Bologna 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.
The shirt still fits. Mouhamadou Sarr is back at Bologna, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Nicolò Cambiaghi 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.
48 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Bologna has been clear about where Jay Enem stands, which is more than many ever get.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Bologna would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at Bologna that is a harder question to answer.
The offer from Winterthur for Federico Bernardeschi 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.
The deal with Spezia 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.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
31 games and 0 goals away from here, and a man the manager did not have last summer. The loan did what loans are supposed to do and almost never do.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Words at Bologna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mihajlo Ilić 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.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Oussama El Azzouzi is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
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.
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Saïd El Mala 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Köln can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Justin Njinmah, and the manager let it.
Squad8 Mar 2027
7 new faces, and Köln are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager's exit leaves Thijs Dallinga exposed
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
“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; Köln are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Saïd El Mala and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Gonzalo Plata 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.
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Köln have gone to Dinamo Moscow with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The offer went to Bloemfontein Celtic this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Köln and SC Paderborn have settled on $3.6M. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
The offer went to Mainz 05 this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
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.
12 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 6 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Köln will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
5 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.