“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 The request is on a desk at Modena, and it is not being withdrawn.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Joaquín scored, was marked 7.71, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
The offer from Vizela for Daniele Montevago 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.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
24 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Manuel De Luca 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 particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Giuseppe Ambrosino 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
1 for Alessandro Sersanti, marked 7.47, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Modena heard it as anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Modena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Modena training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alessandro Bianco 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 21 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 19 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
19 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
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.
Laurent Tielemans 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Luca Zanimacchia. 1‑0 against Südtirol, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Getting past Leandro Chichizola has become the hardest job in the division
10 clean sheets and counting. Forwards used to back themselves here; now they shoot early, shoot wide, and look for somebody to blame.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Modena told Manuel De Luca something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 16 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Modena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Modena will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.83 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
“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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Modena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 41 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Modena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
It finished 1‑0, and it was Alessandro Bianco’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Modena.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at Modena training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Simone Santoro 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.
8.01. 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 13 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 48 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Manuel De Luca 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 injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 14 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Modena will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Modena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 20 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Modena will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Alessandro Bianco 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 19 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Modena will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Modena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
18 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Squad7 Sep 2026
6 new faces, and Modena are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
13 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Joaquín has just signed for Modena, and for once the answer mattered.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Modena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Modena would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.