Marked for Simone Scuffet
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match4 Nov 2026
Cup progress for Pisa
A 2‑0 win over Vicenza, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Match7 Nov 2026
3‑0, and Rafiu Durosinmi took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Pisa tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Defensive actions: 32, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 28 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Squad9 Nov 2026
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Match7 Nov 2026
Pisa cannot stop winning
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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Tempers go at Pisa
Lloyd Kelly 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.
Market9 Nov 2026
“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.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
A performance of 9.26 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match10 Oct 2026
Pisa taken apart
0‑3 to Cremonese, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Tempers go at Pisa
Lloyd Kelly 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.
Squad12 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.
Boardroom12 Oct 2026
Doors closed at Pisa
The music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Simone Scuffet knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Simone Scuffet trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
A mark of 4.67 tells the story without any need for embellishment. He will want the tape of this one quietly lost.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Shots: 7. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Shots: 8. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 31. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Lloyd Kelly 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 Pisa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match3 Oct 2026
Pisa come up short against Genoa
Genoa left with the points after a 1‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Wages eat 359% of everything Pisa earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Marked 8.45 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Shots: 12, enough of them from close enough that a striker in form scores two. He is not a striker in form.
Squad5 Oct 2026
The award goes to Mattéo Tramoni, and nobody around here is inclined to argue with the choice.
Squad5 Oct 2026
The captaincy has been taken off Simone Scuffet. Pisa will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match5 Sep 2026
No mercy from Pisa
Udinese will want this one forgotten quickly: 4‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Pisa were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Defensive actions: 32, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Pisa can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.92, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Market7 Sep 2026
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Pisa hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad7 Sep 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 Pisa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
288% of the income goes out in wages at Pisa
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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
A performance of 8.80 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.