The words a physio says slowly. 107 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Casarano this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Aug 2028
Vito Leonetti has improved at 34, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad28 Aug 2028
Words at Casarano training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrea Santarcangelo 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Casarano know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Casarano will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The words a physio says slowly. 62 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.
Position 18 and 15 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 108 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
69 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Casarano lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Casarano can pretend not to have heard.
Niccolò Chiorra 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.
Squad3 Jan 2028
Stefano Negro 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.
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.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Giovanni Pinto has his answer from Casarano; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
The words a physio says slowly. 107 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.
7 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.
Squad29 Nov 2027
Words at Casarano training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrea Santarcangelo 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Casarano this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Vito Leonetti signs something — a contract at Casarano or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Niccolò Chiorra 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.
Perugia paid $200.0K and Casarano took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Words at Casarano training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Mikołajewski 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.
7 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.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Leandro Versienti has his answer from Casarano; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
“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 Casarano, and it is not being withdrawn.
The terraces14 Dec 2026
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 11 of the 28 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
Philipp Hoffmann 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
Words at Casarano training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Eder 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 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.