Marked for Davide Bertoncini
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 35. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match9 Dec 2026
Novara bow out of the cup
Juventus go through and Novara go home, 0‑2 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Tempers go at Novara
Elia Boseggia 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.
Squad14 Dec 2026
“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.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Eric Lanini dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Marked 7.29 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Novara had the best player on the pitch.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 40. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Raffaele Sibilio, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.81
A mark of 7.81 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Tempers go at Novara
Eric Lanini 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.
The terraces23 Nov 2026
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad23 Nov 2026
“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.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Ten men and a goalkeeper behind him, and it still finished in the net. He knew before anybody told him, and nobody at Novara needed to.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad26 Oct 2026
A fracture rules Thomas Alberti out for 27 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Novara will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
7.39, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Squad26 Oct 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Novara this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Marco Da Graca 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
“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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Aug 2026
A muscle injury sidelines Christian Donadio for 17 days
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Novara will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Eric Lanini commits to Novara for another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Eric Lanini 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 Novara this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.