The words a physio says slowly. 14 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.
0‑3 to Torino, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Federico Baschirotto 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 chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
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.
22 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cremonese lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
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.
Giuseppe Pezzella 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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 13 actions, 6.56, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Cremonese can tell you which week it ends in.
“I watch every Cremonese game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Perugia runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Jamie Vardy wins it after the whistle should have gone
95 minutes played. Jamie Vardy found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Lecce went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at Cremonese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jari Vandeputte 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 Cremonese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I watch every Cremonese game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Siracusa runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“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 Cremonese, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cremonese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
5 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 Cremonese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
“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 Cremonese, and 2 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cremonese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.79, and 2 involvements.
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.
Federico Baschirotto 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Davide Garatti is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Cremonese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jari Vandeputte 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 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.
“I watch every Cremonese game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Perugia runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
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.
Pietro Biolchi 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 board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 92th minute. Inter will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Two goals and a mark of 8.50 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Federico Baschirotto 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.
Involvement in 2 goals, from a player who spent the ninety minutes doing the thing a manager actually wants: being where the ball was going to end up. 7.73 beside his name.
“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 Cremonese hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
At 23 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Cremonese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Filippo Terracciano 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 offer from Atalanta for Federico Ceccherini was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cremonese this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
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.
Federico Baschirotto 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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Cremonese training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jari Vandeputte 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 phone has started ringing about Federico Ceccherini again, and this time the name on the line is Atalanta. Cremonese are listening politely and promising nothing.
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.
It is the quietest way a club tells you what its ambitions are. The money was asked for, the money was refused, and the people who work there every day now know exactly where they stand.