At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.25 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Gabriele Bernardotto 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 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.
20 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
18 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
16 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Guidonia Montecelio has to find a result from somewhere.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Guidonia Montecelio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Paolo Frascatore 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.
At 20 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.
17 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Mees Eppink 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.
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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
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.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.79 for the rest of it.
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Guidonia Montecelio has to find a result from somewhere.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Guidonia Montecelio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Paolo Frascatore 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 Guidonia Montecelio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Paolo Frascatore 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.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Guidonia Montecelio will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
The competition arrived without a word said to him about it. Paolo Frascatore keeps the shirt for now, at Guidonia Montecelio's convenience rather than his own.
The best deals are the ones the accountants never notice. Agostino Rizzo arrives at Guidonia Montecelio with his wages the only cost and something to prove the only clause.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Guidonia Montecelio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Still no offer on the table, and Salvatore Santoro’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.