The offer from Sassuolo for Che Adams 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.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Torino people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Torino have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Che Adams 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 phone has started ringing about Gvidas Gineitis again, and this time the name on the line is Atalanta. Torino are listening politely and promising nothing.
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.
Successful dribbles: 27. 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.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Torino heard it as anything else.
Rolando Mandragora 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.
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.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Che Adams was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.09. 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.
Something was said to Nikola Vlašić and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
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.
Marked 8.15 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Gianmarco Raimondi on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
In brief
The dugoutSomebody else is better right now than Lucas Perri
The dugoutNathan Patterson is still being punished for one mistake
The words a physio says slowly. 18 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.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 0 arrived, 3 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Rolando Mandragora 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.
“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.
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 phone has started ringing about Enzo Ebosse again, and this time the name on the line is Reggiana. Torino are listening politely and promising nothing.
6 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.