Successful dribbles: 25. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The deal with Catania is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Lorenzo Di Livio 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.
“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.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Triestina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leonardo Pedicillo 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 name of Noa Kljajić has come up in conversations Triestina were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Catania have kept their man, and Triestina go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Simone Kosijer is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Alcione Milano, and it could have been more.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Fanis Bakoulas, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.85
A mark of 7.85 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Simone Kosijer scored, was marked 7.49, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Triestina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He is 22 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Leonardo Pedicillo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Triestina this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at Triestina training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leonardo Pedicillo 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 dugout21 Dec 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Raffaele Bernardi to a room that had heard them before.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Triestina will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
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.
Some goals win a match and some take one off somebody else. Noa Kljajić scored in the 87th minute, Pergolettese had already begun thinking about the journey home, and Triestina took the lot.
Fanis Bakoulas 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.
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.
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.91 on the card, and the Triestina support went home talking about one name.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Raffaele Bernardi kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Noa Kljajić, 20, is the weekend’s best young player
Measured against every other kid in the division and first among them. The senior award is where Triestina would like this to lead.
In brief
The dugoutThe plan did not have a place for Gastón Ada
Player ratingsHalf an hour was enough for Noa Kljajić
“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.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑3 Raffaele Bernardi left the room before anybody could ask which.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Hudson Davis
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
Nobody at Triestina is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.83 at 38, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Kristjan Matošević 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.
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Triestina have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Triestina can pretend not to have heard.
Lorenzo Di Livio 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.
Triestina asked and Eintracht Frankfurt said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
10 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Triestina have made the call to LOSC Lille. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 2‑2, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.