“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 Schalke 04 hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Schalke 04 will quote 14 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Loris Karius, and the manager let it.
Player ratings1 Nov 2027
Mattéo Tramoni was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.28. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 91. VfL Wolfsburg had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
In brief
SquadWords at Schalke 04 training over how hard people work
82 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sassuolo lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Nobody at Sassuolo 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.
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 Sassuolo that is a harder question to answer.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Sassuolo. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
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.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager plants his flag on Dany Mota
MatchNothing left to play for but pride at Sassuolo
110 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sassuolo lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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 The request is on a desk at Sassuolo, and it is not being withdrawn.
Cesena paid $4.4M and Sassuolo took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Dany Mota 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.
The terraces19 Jul 2027
Sassuolo spend $19.1M on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $19.1M for Zakaria Aboukhlal, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Sassuolo asked and Fiorentina said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yann Aurel Bisseck was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
7.97, 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.
“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 Sassuolo hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Sassuolo know it.
Arijanet Murić 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.
“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 Sassuolo, and 0 appearances in 17 say he has earned the hearing.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Arijanet Murić wants continental football; whether Sassuolo can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Arijanet Murić 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.
“I watch every Sassuolo game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Laçi runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Ulisses Garcia trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Josh Doig signs something — a contract at Sassuolo or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Frosinone in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.