Marked for Simone Santoro
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 28. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Tempers go at Modena
Fabio Gerli 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
The manager makes an example of Simone Santoro
“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.
Match12 Dec 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Manuel De Luca. 1‑0 against Bari, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Samuele di Benedetto 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.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
A mark of 7.73, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 50. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Tempers go at Modena
Francesco Zampano 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.
Squad16 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 ratings16 Nov 2026
Marked 7.63. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Match14 Nov 2026
A 1‑1 draw with Padova leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Fabio Gerli knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Modena, and both men came out saying it was fine.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad12 Oct 2026
Tempers go at Modena
Manuel De Luca 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
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Carlo Carreri is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Modena training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cláudio Ramos 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.
Match10 Oct 2026
The goals have deserted Modena
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Modena can tell you which week it ends in.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Alessandro Bianco, and the manager let it.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad7 Sep 2026
Matteo Cotali damages knee ligaments — 29 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 29 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.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Modena
Fabio Gerli 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.
Market7 Sep 2026
The name of Daniele Montevago has come up in conversations Modena were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad7 Sep 2026
6 new faces, and Modena are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
7.30, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Modena had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad7 Sep 2026
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Market7 Sep 2026
Modena bring in an old head
Liel is 37 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Match5 Sep 2026
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Pescara defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad10 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Fabio Gerli and Modena agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad10 Aug 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 Modena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Simone Santoro, and the manager let it.
Market10 Aug 2026
Still no offer on the table, and Francesco Zampano’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Fabio Gerli knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Modena, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Market10 Aug 2026
At 33, he has seen every situation this season can produce, twice. The legs will be managed; the head is the purchase.