Marked for Jacopo Nelli
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match18 Nov 2028
8 matches without a win for Giana Erminio
The run now stands at 8, and the questions being asked around Giana Erminio are no longer polite ones.
Match18 Nov 2028
8 matches without a goal for Giana Erminio
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 8 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Squad20 Nov 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Giana Erminio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings20 Nov 2028
Successful dribbles: 20. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match18 Nov 2028
0‑1 to Novara, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Tancredi Vella 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.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Luca Ferri 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.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Andrea Piazza 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 Andrea Piazza trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings20 Dec 2027
Successful dribbles: 34. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match18 Dec 2027
4 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.
Boardroom20 Dec 2027
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Filippo Visentin has agreed terms with Mantova for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad20 Dec 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 Giana Erminio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad20 Dec 2027
Matteo Marotta 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.
Match18 Dec 2027
Virtus Verona left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match16 Oct 2027
Nobody wants to play Giana Erminio 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.
Squad18 Oct 2027
Nicolas Previtali 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.
Boardroom18 Oct 2027
The numbers do not look good at Giana Erminio
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Squad18 Oct 2027
Words at Giana Erminio training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Matteo Marotta 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.
Player ratings18 Oct 2027
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad18 Oct 2027
The manager makes an example of Matías Vilalta
“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 ratings18 Oct 2027
Ninety minutes of Mehdi Bounou at his very best
Marked 8.15. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Giana Erminio.
Loan watch18 Oct 2027
“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 Giana Erminio, and 0 appearances in 13 say he has earned the hearing.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad13 Sep 2027
Andrea Piazza is a better footballer than he was
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.
Squad13 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 Giana Erminio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Jacopo Nelli has improved at 27, 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. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Player ratings13 Sep 2027
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings13 Sep 2027
A mark of 7.56, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Too much change too quickly at Giana Erminio
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Match11 Sep 2027
Ninety minutes, two goalkeepers with clean gloves, and not one finish worth keeping. Vicenza will be the happier side with the point.
Player ratings13 Sep 2027
10 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match16 Aug 2027
Every point is an argument now for Giana Erminio
Position 19 and 23 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Andrea Piazza is a better footballer than he was
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.
Squad16 Aug 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 Giana Erminio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match27 Mar 2027
No end in sight to Giana Erminio's wait for a win
16 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Giana Erminio has to find a result from somewhere.
Match29 Mar 2027
Position 18, 21 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Matteo Marotta 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.
Squad29 Mar 2027
14 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad29 Mar 2027
The manager makes an example of Jacopo Nelli
“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.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Words at Giana Erminio training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Federico Arena 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match20 Mar 2027
15 matches without a win for Giana Erminio
The run now stands at 15, and the questions being asked around Giana Erminio are no longer polite ones.
The terraces22 Mar 2027
Anger at Giana Erminio 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.
Squad22 Mar 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 Giana Erminio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Matteo Marotta 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.
Boardroom22 Mar 2027
Wages eat 150% of everything Giana Erminio earn
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.
Match20 Mar 2027
The goal that put Ospitaletto ahead was still being replayed on the concourse when Giana Erminio equalised, 4 minutes later. Leads are only worth what you do with them.
Squad22 Mar 2027
“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.
Player ratings22 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match20 Mar 2027
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match13 Feb 2027
No end in sight to Giana Erminio's wait for a win
10 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Giana Erminio has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Matteo Marotta 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.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Jacopo Nelli 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.
Player ratings15 Feb 2027
Marked 7.90. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Words at Giana Erminio training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Federico Arena 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.
Match13 Feb 2027
A 1‑1 draw with Arzignano leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Market15 Feb 2027
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Nicolas Previtali signs something — a contract at Giana Erminio or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Squad15 Feb 2027
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Giana Erminio would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Player ratings15 Feb 2027
Stephen Nenè changes it off the bench
He was not in the side at half past three and he had settled it before five. Half an hour, and Giana Erminio had a different afternoon.