Marked for Gabriele Perretta
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad4 Oct 2027
Matteo Castaldo damages knee ligaments — 96 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 96 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.
Match2 Oct 2027
6 matches without a win for Pontedera
The run now stands at 6, and the questions being asked around Pontedera are no longer polite ones.
Player ratings4 Oct 2027
Successful dribbles: 24. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad4 Oct 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Umberto Saracco commits to Pontedera for another 2 years.
Squad4 Oct 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pontedera this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match2 Oct 2027
Pontedera cannot find the net
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad20 Sep 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Matteo Castaldo
111 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Pontedera lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match18 Sep 2027
A 2-goal lead gone for Pontedera
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. Arezzo kept coming because nothing stopped them, and Pontedera will be asked about the last half hour all week.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad20 Sep 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pontedera this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Riccardo Ladinetti has improved at 26, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Match18 Sep 2027
Beaten 2‑3, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad6 Sep 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Pontedera may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad6 Sep 2027
279 appearances across 8 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Pontedera know what they have.
Player ratings6 Sep 2027
Successful dribbles: 24. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Giovanni Mecenero is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad6 Sep 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pontedera this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match4 Sep 2027
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Boardroom26 Jul 2027
The silence upstairs is getting loud at Pontedera
Nobody on the board has said anything against the manager, which is the point — they have stopped saying anything for him either.
Squad26 Jul 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pontedera this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad26 Jul 2027
Riccardo Ladinetti 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
The terraces21 Jun 2027
Anger at Pontedera spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Squad21 Jun 2027
22 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Pontedera lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad21 Jun 2027
A fracture rules Niccolò Guidotti out for 17 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Pontedera will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
The terraces24 May 2027
Anger at Pontedera spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Squad24 May 2027
A fracture rules Niccolò Guidotti out for 49 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Pontedera will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad24 May 2027
Umberto Saracco 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings17 May 2027
A brace, and Davide Castelli takes the afternoon — 8.69
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Davide Castelli provided it, and the 8.69 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Match15 May 2027
Cittadella keep winning on the road
5 away wins in a row. Travelling support is the truest kind, and this season it is being repaid in the only currency that counts.
Match15 May 2027
Nobody wants to play Cittadella right now
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Market17 May 2027
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Squad17 May 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cittadella this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 May 2027
The manager makes an example of Matteo Angeli
“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 ratings17 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 14. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad17 May 2027
The division's best last weekend was a Cittadella man
It is a small honour and it is not nothing: somebody watched every match in the division and decided that Davide Castelli was the best thing in any of them.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match3 May 2027
Cittadella refuse to drop out of the race
Position 2, 59 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Player ratings3 May 2027
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.99 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Match1 May 2027
Another one collected away from home
4 on the bounce on the road for Cittadella. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
Match1 May 2027
A 2‑0 win over Novara, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad3 May 2027
Nicola Pavan gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Boardroom3 May 2027
90% of the income goes out in wages at Cittadella
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Squad3 May 2027
Eduard Ihnatov named in the team of the month
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Eduard Ihnatov is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Player ratings3 May 2027
13 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.
Player ratings3 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 11. 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
Steady
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
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.
The terraces8 Feb 2027
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 7 of the 31 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
Market8 Feb 2027
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Francesco Amatucci 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.
Squad8 Feb 2027
The manager makes an example of Alessio Vita
“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.
Match6 Feb 2027
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad8 Feb 2027
The award goes to Davide Castelli, and nobody around here is inclined to argue with the choice.
Squad8 Feb 2027
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.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
4.93. Every footballer has these and most of them happen away from a full ground; his did not, and he will be aware of that all week.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad28 Sep 2026
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cittadella will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match23 Sep 2026
Giana Erminio go through and Cittadella go home, 0‑0 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Squad28 Sep 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 Cittadella this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match26 Sep 2026
Whatever happens, Cittadella do not lose
6 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad28 Sep 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Tomás Galván, and the manager let it.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Twelve yards, a goalkeeper guessing, and it still did not go in. He will take the next one, and every soul in the ground will hold their breath.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Marked 7.74. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.69 on the card, and the Cittadella support went home talking about one name.