9 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.
Position 18 and 24 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.
Position 18 on 24 points. Every season is a story and this is the last line of it, and now the club has three months to decide what the next one is about.
“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 The request is on a desk at Cagliari, and it is not being withdrawn.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Daniel Maldini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Yerry Mina trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
8 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Daniel Maldini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Alen Sherri knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Alessandro Deiola will call it something else in private.
In brief
The terracesEverybody has an opinion about Alen Sherri
7 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.
6 goals in one match, M'Bala Nzola on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Cagliari and Atalanta.
Riyad Idrissi 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 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.
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The dugout10 May 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑5 defeat, delivered by Gabriele Ferrigno to a room that had heard them before.
Beaten 5 times, with 2 saves for company. Goalkeepers carry these scorelines on their record whoever actually caused them, which is the quiet injustice of the job.
In brief
The dugoutAlen Sherri asks for a word with the manager
6 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.
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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Alen Sherri has moved up it.
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Kevin Carlos is on it.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Daniel Maldini’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Cagliari needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Position 18 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.
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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cagliari know it.
Successful dribbles: 16. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Something was said to Yerry Mina and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Zé Pedro.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Cagliari can tell you which week it ends in.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Zé Pedro was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
In brief
The dugoutMattia Felici knocks on the manager’s door
Words at Cagliari training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Maldini 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.
Andrea Belotti and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Alessandro Deiola will call it something else in private.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Gennaro Borrelli signs something — a contract at Cagliari or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cagliari 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.
“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.
The dugout29 Mar 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Giuseppe Aurelio's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Nobody at Cagliari will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Monza next, and one man in the Cagliari dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Szymon Roguski is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
“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.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 2‑3 defeat, delivered by Gabriele Ferrigno to a room that had heard them before.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Cagliari pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
Nobody's fault and entirely his: a goal that goes into the book with his name against it and nothing about it intended. Cagliari deserved better, and so did he.
4 call-ups is a compliment to the squad and a headache for the man running it. He will get them back in a fortnight, tired, in various states of repair.
22 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cagliari lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“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 Cagliari, and it is not being withdrawn.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Semih Kılıçsoy did not need any: 7.67, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
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.
He is 21 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to M'Bala Nzola, and the manager let it.
The dugout15 Mar 2027
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Gabriele Ferrigno kept it short after the 2‑1 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Riyad Idrissi 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.
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.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cagliari know it.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Cagliari pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
In brief
SquadA place in the month's best eleven for Semih Kılıçsoy
Position 18 and 18 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cagliari know it.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Words at Cagliari training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Maldini 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cagliari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Two sides from the bottom of the table, three points, and an afternoon that will be described afterwards as a relegation decider by whoever loses it.
The dugout1 Mar 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Gabriele Ferrigno to a room that had heard them before.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Cagliari told Riyad Idrissi something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cagliari will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Daniel Maldini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cagliari know it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Cagliari, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Gabriele Ferrigno chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
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.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Cagliari will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
“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 Cagliari, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 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.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Sassuolo moved on, Andrea Belotti reports back to Cagliari, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
5 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Words at Cagliari training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Maldini 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Ravenna have kept their man, and Cagliari go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Position 18 and 14 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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Daniel Maldini provided it, and the 8.82 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Cagliari have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Cagliari can pretend not to have heard.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Michel Ndary Adopo was one of the reasons people came, and $29.1M does not replace that by itself.
Boardroom1 Feb 2027
Cagliari close the window on a squad of their own making
0 in and 1 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Cagliari heard it as anything else.
“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 Cagliari, and it is not being withdrawn.
Gennaro Borrelli and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Szymon Roguski is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
At 21 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.
Inter made Cagliari work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
The dugout28 Dec 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑2 Gabriele Ferrigno left the room before anybody could ask which.
“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 Cagliari, and it is not being withdrawn.
15 combined actions and 6.82. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Daniel Maldini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Cagliari know it.
A point taken on 89 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Gabriele Ferrigno after the 2‑2 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Riyad Idrissi 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 players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑1, Gabriele Ferrigno could afford to be generous.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Alberto Dossena trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Cagliari training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Maldini 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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
The Cagliari dressing room has split into 6 groups
Squads form friendships and that is healthy; this is not that. 6 separate groups, 4 players belonging to none of them, and a set of tables at lunch that have stopped rearranging themselves. It very rarely fixes itself.
“I watch every Cagliari game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Cittadella runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Gabriele Ferrigno after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Daniel Maldini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Cagliari, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” André Duarte has his answer from Cagliari; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Giuseppe Aurelio is on it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Yerry Mina signs something — a contract at Cagliari or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 14 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“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.
“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 Cagliari, and 4 appearances in 12 say he has earned the hearing.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cagliari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Cagliari training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Maldini 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.
“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.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Jacopo Fazzini's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
In brief
The dugoutM'Bala Nzola knocks on the manager’s door
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Daniel Maldini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Gabriele Ferrigno was not hiding it after 1‑1, and nobody in the Cagliari dressing room was either.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Cagliari, another week without a signature from Riyad Idrissi.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at Cagliari that is a harder question to answer.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Cagliari 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 Cagliari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Cagliari can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
9 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Cagliari, and both men came out saying it was fine.