Marked for Alessandro Russo
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad5 Feb 2029
A knee injury of the worst kind for Marco Sportiello
79 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Avellino lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Antonio De Angelis has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
Crisis meeting at Avellino
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Market5 Feb 2029
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Avellino is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Market5 Feb 2029
The fee is $710.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Sassuolo drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Emiliano Ellacopulos has agreed terms with Genoa for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad5 Feb 2029
Tommaso Biasci 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.
Squad5 Feb 2029
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Antonio De Cristofaro commits to Avellino for another 4 years.
Squad5 Feb 2029
Words at Avellino training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alessandro Fontanarosa 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market5 Feb 2029
Zenit come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Sassuolo did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
The silence upstairs is getting loud at Sassuolo
Nobody on the board has said anything against the manager, which is the point — they have stopped saying anything for him either.
Market5 Feb 2029
“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.
Squad5 Feb 2029
“The easiest signature of my career.” Mattia Perin and Sassuolo agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad5 Feb 2029
Josh Doig in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sassuolo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market5 Feb 2029
Avellino pay $710.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Squad5 Feb 2029
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Domenico Berardi, and the manager let it.
Squad5 Feb 2029
Federico Baschirotto 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.
Match3 Feb 2029
Lecce made Sassuolo work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings27 Nov 2028
Successful dribbles: 67. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad27 Nov 2028
Alessandro Russo damages knee ligaments — 15 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 15 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.
Squad27 Nov 2028
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sassuolo will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings27 Nov 2028
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.95 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Match25 Nov 2028
Still nobody has beaten Sassuolo
The unbeaten run reaches 9. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad27 Nov 2028
Josh Doig in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sassuolo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad27 Nov 2028
Words at Sassuolo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrea Pinamonti 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.
Match25 Nov 2028
Three points for Sassuolo, 2‑0 the final word against Monza in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Market27 Nov 2028
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Andrea Pinamonti signs something — a contract at Sassuolo or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad20 Nov 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Alessandro Russo
23 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sassuolo lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 89 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Match18 Nov 2028
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 8 matches without defeat is a foundation Sassuolo did not have in the autumn.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Josh Doig 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.
Player ratings20 Nov 2028
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.
Loan watch20 Nov 2028
“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 Sassuolo, and 0 appearances in 15 say he has earned the hearing.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Arijanet Murić knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Arijanet Murić trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market20 Nov 2028
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Arijanet Murić signs something — a contract at Sassuolo or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Match18 Nov 2028
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Torino 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
Uneasy
Squad28 Aug 2028
Daniele Rugani damages knee ligaments — 105 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 105 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.
Market28 Aug 2028
“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 Sassuolo, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad28 Aug 2028
Josh Doig in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sassuolo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Aug 2028
Mattia Perin 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.
Squad28 Aug 2028
At 26 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Market28 Aug 2028
Gabriele Colaciuri is 20, and Sassuolo have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Match26 Aug 2028
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Market28 Aug 2028
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Luca D'Andrea has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Sassuolo.
Market28 Aug 2028
The name of Arijanet Murić keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Sassuolo say nothing, which says plenty.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match15 May 2027
No end in sight to Audace Cerignola's wait for a win
12 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Audace Cerignola has to find a result from somewhere.
Player ratings17 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 37. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market17 May 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Audace Cerignola can pretend not to have heard.
Squad17 May 2027
Pablo Santana: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Audace Cerignola have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Match15 May 2027
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Audace Cerignola can tell you which week it ends in.
Match15 May 2027
Casertana left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.