A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Bologna 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 The request is on a desk at Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bologna they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Bologna can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
8.34. 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.
Squad20 May 2030
Words at Bologna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christian Dalle Mura 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.
Adulai Embaló 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.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Łukasz Skorupski knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bologna will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 The request is on a desk at Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
Player ratings13 May 2030
Up for the corner, and Fabio Miretti delivers — 7.94
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Fabio Miretti scored, was marked 7.94, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Antonio Raimondo wants continental football; whether Bologna can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
AC Milan held the lead for 4 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. Bologna answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
“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 Bologna know it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bologna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout13 May 2030
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 Sandro Fortunato left the room before anybody could ask which.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Bologna will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
541 appearances across 11 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
12 shut-outs in 33 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Nicola Bagnolini has been having a lot of them.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 67 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Oussama El Azzouzi provided it, and the 8.08 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Fabio Miretti 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 no worse way to lose a footballer. Christian Dalle Mura has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Oussama El Azzouzi. 3‑1 against Genoa, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 78 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Karlo Butić will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
Juventus held the lead for 2 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. Bologna answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
11 shut-outs in 31 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Nicola Bagnolini has been having a lot of them.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 86 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
4 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.
Squad15 Apr 2030
Words at Bologna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christian Dalle Mura 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.
The ambition story running backwards, and the one nobody tells: a footballer who wants a smaller ground, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is rarely reported as anything else.
30 appearances at Reggiana and the goals have stopped going in. Bologna lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bologna will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Niklas Pyyhtiä will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Bologna can tell you which week it ends in.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christian Dalle Mura was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout8 Apr 2030
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 0‑2 Sandro Fortunato left the room before anybody could ask which.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bologna will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Bologna hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bologna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Bologna would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Karlo Butić will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christian Dalle Mura was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Adulai Embaló 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 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.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Bologna has been clear about where Niklas Pyyhtiä stands, which is more than many ever get.
0‑3 to Hellas Verona, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Matias Antonini wants continental football; whether Bologna can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
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.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Federico Bernardeschi will call it something else in private.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Niklas Pyyhtiä will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
Fabio Miretti 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 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 Bologna know it.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Sandro Fortunato on a 2‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Łukasz Skorupski 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.
Marked 6.89 on 11 actions at both ends of the pitch. Midfielders like this get described as unspectacular by people who have never tried to play against one.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Bologna has been clear about where Federico Bernardeschi stands, which is more than many ever get.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christian Dalle Mura was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Antoine N'Diaye has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Sandro Fortunato after the 2‑2 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
The dugout25 Feb 2030
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Sandro Fortunato was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Bologna dressing room was either.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Cagliari defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Bologna asked and Lazio said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bologna they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Alessandro Sersanti scored, was marked 7.82, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Add another name to the list: Livorno have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Christian Dalle Mura. The answer from Bologna has not changed — yet.
Marked 6.95 on 9 actions at both ends of the pitch. Midfielders like this get described as unspectacular by people who have never tried to play against one.
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.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Campobasso waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Bologna is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
$3.2M on the table at Avellino. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 2 arrived, 2 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Bologna will try again when the window opens; Genoa may not be selling by then.
Bologna asked and Juve Stabia said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
M'Bala Nzola and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad4 Feb 2030
Words at Bologna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christian Dalle Mura 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.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Bologna people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Genoa have accepted the money. What Bologna do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Antonio Raimondo provided it, and the 8.75 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody 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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The fee is $2.0M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Virtus Entella drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
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.
AS Roma paid $2.4M and Bologna took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bologna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Pineto keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Filippo Rinaldi is living that version at Bologna, and it tends to show in the first month.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Lazio have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Bologna have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Everything agreed with Virtus Entella, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
Bologna had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Picerno, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Łukasz Skorupski 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.
Successful dribbles: 22. 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.
Add another name to the list: Livorno have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Christian Dalle Mura. The answer from Bologna has not changed — yet.
Bologna asked and Arezzo said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Bologna people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The offer from Dolomiti Bellunesi for Simone Giordano 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.
“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 happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 35 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Südtirol have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Bologna can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bologna they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
Squad31 Dec 2029
Words at Bologna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christian Dalle Mura 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Sandro Fortunato after 0‑4, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Every touch weighed, every quote parsed, every mistake replayed. Some players grow into that; some are quietly finished by it; nobody knows which until afterwards.
8.19. 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.
8.15. 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.
Marked 8.02 — 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.
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 has had enough of the noise. Whether Bologna can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Gioele Zacchi: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Niklas Pyyhtiä will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bologna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 6.11 for the rest of it.
Łukasz Skorupski 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: Fabio Miretti. 3‑1 against Lecce, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
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.
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 players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑1, Sandro Fortunato 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Karlo Butić will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
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.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Antoine N'Diaye is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
“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 dugout26 Nov 2029
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 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Sandro Fortunato to a room that had heard them before.
Nobody at Bologna 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Lorenzo Sgarbi’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Bologna needing him to play as if none of it matters.
6 goals in 10 games at Frosinone — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Bologna updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Nobody at Bologna is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Something was said to Antonio Raimondo and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Nobody at Bologna 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Karlo Butić’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Bologna needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Oussama El Azzouzi provided it, and the 8.31 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Antonio Raimondo wants continental football; whether Bologna can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
8.00. 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.
Squad12 Nov 2029
Words at Bologna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christian Dalle Mura 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.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Federico Rodríguez did not need any: 7.80, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Federico Rodríguez 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.
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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Bologna are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
M'Bala Nzola 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christian Dalle Mura was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout29 Oct 2029
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.” Sandro Fortunato chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Atalanta defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Nobody at Bologna 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.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.00 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bologna they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Łukasz Skorupski 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Federico Bernardeschi. 1‑0 against Cagliari, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
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 pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Karlo Butić, and the manager let it.
The dugout22 Oct 2029
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Sandro Fortunato, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
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 Nicolas Haas is on it.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
Fabio Miretti 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.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Bologna can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
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 Antoine N'Diaye is on 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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Bologna would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Cagliari in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Bologna, another week without a signature from Marco Dalla Vecchia.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Nicolas Haas trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bologna lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bologna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
100 for the club now, each one filed in somebody’s memory with a date and a scoreline. Numbers like this are what supporters argue about in twenty years.
Something was said to Samuel Chukwueze and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
In brief
The dugoutŁukasz Skorupski is still being punished for one mistake
The words a physio says slowly. 29 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bologna heard it as anything else.
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.
40 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bologna lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bologna they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Oussama El Azzouzi scored, was marked 7.65, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Conceding is one thing; the response is what tells you about a dressing room. Oussama El Azzouzi had Bologna level again within 1 minutes, and Lazio never got to play with a lead at all.
Successful dribbles: 17. 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.
“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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 9 actions, 6.90, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christian Dalle Mura was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
10 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.
A goalkeeper’s error has no defender behind it to tidy it away. He knew before the ball crossed the line, the crowd knew a second later, and there is nothing anybody can say tonight.
Bologna asked and Spezia said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Karlo Butić will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
M'Bala Nzola 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Bologna are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Bologna has been clear about where Niklas Pyyhtiä stands, which is more than many ever get.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 24 arrived, 20 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Successful dribbles: 24. 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.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Bologna will try again when the window opens; Arezzo may not be selling by then.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Inter have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Bologna have lost him in all but the paperwork.
$7.6M was the most the club would pay and Udinese were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have shaken hands with Cagliari; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
The offer went to Arezzo this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $3.5M — a club that wants Gennaro Iaccarino enough to be asked twice.
Fabio Miretti 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.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Padova waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Bologna is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Bologna have gone to Udinese with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Bologna asked and Arezzo said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $529.4K — a club that wants Mamadou Coulibaly enough to be asked twice.
Łukasz Skorupski 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christian Dalle Mura 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 Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Bologna asked and Spezia said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The chase for Filippo Vesentini ended with $490.0K changing hands and Union Brescia out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Filippo Vesentini has just signed for Bologna, and for once the answer mattered.
The name of Alessandro Russo has come up in conversations Bologna were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Oussama El Azzouzi may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
In brief
The dugoutLuca Lo Monaco has become a man the manager trusts
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Bologna people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Atalanta have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Bologna have gone to Genoa with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christian Dalle Mura was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He used to be one of the options. He is now one of the men the options are picked around, and the change happened quietly enough that only the dressing room noticed on the day.
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 Renato Ferrigno is on it.
The offer went to AC Milan this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Add another name to the list: Giana Erminio have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Federico Bernardeschi. The answer from Bologna has not changed — yet.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Genoa have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“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.
Squad30 Jul 2029
Words at Bologna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christian Dalle Mura 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 Jul 2029
11 new faces, and Bologna 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.
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 Antoine N'Diaye is on it.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Bologna people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Udinese have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
$550.0K on the table at Genoa. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Iván Valenzuela 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.
Nobody at Bologna 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and Bologna have no good answer.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Ascoli have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bologna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The name of Karlo Butić has come up in conversations Bologna were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Bologna can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Christian Dalle Mura was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
In brief
Transfer targetsA loan move for Idrissa Guèye is in the works
Inter arrived with $37.1M and left with the best player in the building. The board will call it business; the queue at the ticket office will use other words.
The offer went to AC Milan this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Crotone waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Bologna is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Ismaël Koné has gone, the accounts have $37.1M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bologna heard it as anything else.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Iván Valenzuela is living that version at Bologna, and it tends to show in the first month.
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 clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Bologna people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Bologna asked and AS Roma said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
The chase for Marco Dalla Vecchia ended with $1.7M changing hands and Torino out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
The fee is $1.4M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Lecce drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Squad2 Jul 2029
13 new faces, and Bologna 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.
7 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Bologna have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The offer from Udinese for Eivind Helland 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 chase for Federico Gattoni ended with $4.0M changing hands and Ascoli out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
He is going to Napoli, the club has $12.1M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
The offer went to Lecce this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Sergio Mosquera has, at Bologna, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Bologna asked and Napoli said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Bologna have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Hellas Verona paid $9.5M and Bologna took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
He is going to AC Milan, the club has $16.2M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Bologna have gone to Hellas Verona with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Inter have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Arezzo had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
Bologna and Catanzaro have settled on $430.0K. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Jonathan Rowe was one of the reasons people came, and $18.5M does not replace that by itself.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Juventus have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Bologna have gone to Como with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
The phone has started ringing about Gennaro Borrelli again, and this time the name on the line is Mantova. Bologna are listening politely and promising nothing.
$720.0K on the table at Union Brescia. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Bologna have gone to Union Brescia with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Bologna hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
Position 10 on 53 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.
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.
7.86, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
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.
35 appearances and 11 goals away from here, and a player the manager did not have in August. Loans are sent out hoping for exactly this and most of them do not deliver it.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Nobody at Bologna 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.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Sandro Fortunato after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Niklas Pyyhtiä will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bologna heard it as anything else.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Farès Bousnina 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 dugout14 May 2029
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 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Sandro Fortunato to a room that had heard them before.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bologna heard it as anything else.
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.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Oussama El Azzouzi will call it something else in private.
10 goals in 26 games at Najran — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Bologna updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
The dugout7 May 2029
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 Sandro Fortunato 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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Petar Marković has agreed terms with Catania for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Sandro Fortunato after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Abdel Rahim Alhassane trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Farès Bousnina was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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 Benjamín Domínguez is on it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Bologna know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Farès Bousnina will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
Match21 Apr 2029
Nobody could stop scoring
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Bologna and Inter in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Thijs Dallinga has his answer from Bologna; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Successful dribbles: 18. 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Niklas Pyyhtiä will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Farès Bousnina was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
8 clean sheets from 30 appearances at Casarano. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Bologna know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
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 Nicolas Haas is on it.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Bologna can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Bologna pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Sandro Fortunato could afford to be generous.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Farès Bousnina was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
“I watch every Bologna game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Frosinone runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Nobody at Bologna 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Bologna know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout26 Mar 2029
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 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Sandro Fortunato to a room that had heard them before.
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.
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 Thijs Dallinga is on it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bologna they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bologna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
0‑1 to Hellas Verona, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
The dugout19 Mar 2029
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 0‑1 Sandro Fortunato left the room before anybody could ask which.
Successful dribbles: 14. 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Federico Rodríguez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Bologna told Francesco Coppola something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Thijs Dallinga provided it, and the 8.69 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
400 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.
Marked 8.18 — 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.
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 players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑2, Sandro Fortunato could afford to be generous.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Farès Bousnina will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Farès Bousnina was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Sandro Fortunato after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bologna they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
1 for Ismaël Koné, marked 7.89, 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.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Luca Nesi has agreed terms with Juve Stabia for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Benjamín Domínguez wants continental football; whether Bologna can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Bologna and Empoli in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Bologna asked and Napoli said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
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.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Bologna have lost him in all but the paperwork.
$1.2M was the most the club would pay and Como were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
“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.
Bologna asked and Juventus said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
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.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Bologna are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Bologna can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
Squad12 Feb 2029
Words at Bologna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Farès Bousnina 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.
In brief
Squad5 new faces, and Bologna are still learning each other
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Udinese had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Sampdoria waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Bologna is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Oussama El Azzouzi scored, was marked 7.96, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Boardroom5 Feb 2029
Deadline passes with 5 signed and 5 gone
That is the business done at Bologna until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Bologna have gone to Como with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Bologna had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at AlbinoLeffe, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
1 for Ismaël Koné, marked 7.74, 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.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Ismaël Koné wants continental football; whether Bologna can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Bologna have done the hard part with Parma, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
The goal that put Napoli ahead was still being replayed on the concourse when Bologna equalised, 2 minutes later. Leads are only worth what you do with them.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer from Atalanta for Thijs Dallinga 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.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bologna heard it as anything else.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Farès Bousnina will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Farès Bousnina has agreed terms with Palermo for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Bologna offered $52.0K; Torino said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Bologna have lost him in all but the paperwork.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Thijs Dallinga provided it, and the 8.83 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Riccardo Orsolini was one of the reasons people came, and $20.1M does not replace that by itself.
Everything was agreed with Lazio and then the doctor spoke. Bologna have walked away from a signing on the advice of somebody who never saw him play, which is how it is supposed to work.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Bologna have lost him in all but the paperwork.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
Bologna have gone to Torino with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Bologna asked and Venezia said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Add another name to the list: Pisa have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Antoine N'Diaye. The answer from Bologna has not changed — yet.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Bologna will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Bologna hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Match30 Dec 2028
Nobody could stop scoring
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Bologna and AC Milan in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Sandro Fortunato after 0‑7, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Some goals win a match and some take one off somebody else. Ismaël Koné scored in the 86th minute, Cremonese had already begun thinking about the journey home, and Bologna took the lot.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bologna is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Antoine N'Diaye has agreed terms with Pescara for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Involvement in 2 goals, from a player who spent the ninety minutes doing the thing a manager actually wants: being where the ball was going to end up. 7.96 beside his name.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Ismaël Koné. 2‑1 against Cremonese, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Fiorentina made Bologna work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings25 Dec 2028
Ismaël Koné was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.28. 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.
8.10. 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.
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.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Luca Lo Monaco did not need any: 7.76, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Nicolò Cambiaghi 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.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Benjamín Domínguez wants continental football; whether Bologna can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
200 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Marked 8.12 — 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.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bologna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 16 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
“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 dugout11 Dec 2028
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.” Sandro Fortunato kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Bologna hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑1, Sandro Fortunato could afford to be generous.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Antoine N'Diaye has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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.
The first defeat in 5 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Torino; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Sandro Fortunato after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Successful dribbles: 14. 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.
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 Łukasz Skorupski is on it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Bologna know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Benjamín Domínguez trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Torino in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Bologna. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Mikel Amondarain 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.
Successful dribbles: 19. 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.
8 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.17, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
The dugout13 Nov 2028
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Sandro Fortunato, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
A 2‑0 win over Venezia, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Player ratings6 Nov 2028
Luca Lo Monaco, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.08
A mark of 8.08 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
4 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.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Bologna hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
He is 20 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.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Federico Bernardeschi is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 6.65, and 2 involvements.
8.22. 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.
The dugout30 Oct 2028
The manager has not finished forgetting Nicolò Cambiaghi'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 dugout30 Oct 2028
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.” Sandro Fortunato kept it short after the 3‑1 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
8.02. 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.
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 Łukasz Skorupski is on it.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Riccardo Orsolini’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Bologna needing him to play as if none of it matters.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Bologna can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Oussama El Azzouzi 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.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Bologna can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
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 Benjamín Domínguez is on 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 Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Bologna. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Riccardo Orsolini has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
The ambition story running the other way, and the one nobody tells: a footballer asking for a smaller stage, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is very rarely reported as anything else.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Sandro Fortunato after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
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.
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.
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
Up for the corner, and Ismaël Koné delivers — 7.98
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Ismaël Koné scored, was marked 7.98, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
“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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 9 actions, 7.14, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
Four weeks in which nobody in the division did his job better. The award goes on a shelf and the player goes back into the side, which is the order Bologna prefer.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Bologna will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Thijs Dallinga. 1‑0 against Juventus, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
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 Łukasz Skorupski is on it.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Sandro Fortunato on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 28 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Ismaël Koné had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Lecce were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
6 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Bologna has to find a result from somewhere.
Player ratings18 Sep 2028
Up for the corner, and Ismaël Koné delivers — 7.92
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Ismaël Koné scored, was marked 7.92, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
8.12. 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.
“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 Bologna, and 3 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 37 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bologna heard it as anything else.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Bologna will try again when the window opens; Atalanta may not be selling by then.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Thijs Dallinga has his answer from Bologna; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
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 Thijs Dallinga is on it.
The dugout11 Sep 2028
The manager has not finished forgetting Niklas Pyyhtiä'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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bologna will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have shaken hands with Atalanta; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Bologna has to find a result from somewhere.
Boardroom4 Sep 2028
Deadline passes with 12 signed and 46 gone
That is the business done at Bologna until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bologna heard it as anything else.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bologna will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bologna have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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.
Oussama El Azzouzi 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.
Bologna asked and AS Roma said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
8.25. 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.
“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 Bologna, and 3 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Bologna will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Benjamín Domínguez wants continental football; whether Bologna can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Gennaro Troisi is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Flavio Baraldi is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Gianmarco Fortunato has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bologna will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The chase for Alessandro Russo ended with $2.3M changing hands and Sassuolo out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
$58.0K on the table at Palermo. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Bologna can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
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.
The dugout14 Aug 2028
The manager has not finished forgetting Joaquín Sosa'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.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Bologna will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The deal with Sassuolo is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
470 appearances across 9 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bologna heard it as anything else.
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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 84 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. AS Roma have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off 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 Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nobody at Bologna 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.
124 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Bologna lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Young Boys paid $49.2M and Bologna took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bologna will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Atalanta paid $10.4M and Bologna took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Jens Odgaard has gone, the accounts have $49.2M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
Nicolò Cambiaghi 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.
10 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The words a physio says slowly. 133 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 100 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Bologna people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Bologna can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Inter have kept their man, and Bologna go back to a list with one name crossed off 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 Bologna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
In brief
The dugoutThijs Dallinga has become a man the manager trusts
The dugoutThe manager has not finished forgetting Joaquín Sosa's mistake
The words a physio says slowly. 140 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.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Bologna will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Bologna people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“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 Bologna, and it is not being withdrawn.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Bologna have done the hard part with Bari, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
The name of Jens Odgaard has come up in conversations Bologna were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
$330.0K was the most the club would pay and Palermo were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
149 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Bologna lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 116 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bologna can pretend not to have heard.
“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.
$330.0K on the table at Palermo. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The phone has started ringing about Wisdom Amey again, and this time the name on the line is Casarano. Bologna are listening politely and promising nothing.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bologna will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The offer from Cosenza for Eivind Helland 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Nicola Bagnolini will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bologna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Bologna can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Bologna will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Squad26 Jun 2028
Words at Bologna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mikel Amondarain 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.
In brief
Squad12 new faces, and Bologna are still learning each other