“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 The request is on a desk at Bari, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bari have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Bari are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
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.
21 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.
21 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Mehdi Dorval 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Valerio Mantovani 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.
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.23 at 36, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Empoli moved on, Davide Marfella reports back to Bari, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giuseppe Sibilli 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.
Riccardo Pagano, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.62
A mark of 8.62 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.
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.
Éder 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Riccardo Pagano has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
8.25. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Éder is living that version at Bari, and it tends to show in the first month.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bari can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Bari will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Andrea Allegretto has just signed for Bari, and for once the answer mattered.
The fee is $620.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Catania drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Mehdi Dorval 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.
In brief
SquadWords at Bari training over how hard people work
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bari 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Matthias Verreth trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.