From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad12 Oct 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Carlo Crialese
107 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cittadella lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad12 Oct 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cittadella this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Diego Falcinelli falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“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.
Match10 Oct 2026
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Vicenza defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad5 Oct 2026
Carlo Crialese damages knee ligaments — 115 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 115 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.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 30. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Francesco Amatucci 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Cittadella training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Diego Falcinelli 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.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Wages eat 198% of everything Cittadella earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Squad5 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Gianluca Saro
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad28 Sep 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Carlo Crialese
123 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cittadella lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match23 Sep 2026
A 2‑0 win over Giana Erminio, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.82, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Match26 Sep 2026
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Cittadella have 5 straight wins of it.
Squad28 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cittadella this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 20. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match26 Sep 2026
Three points for Cittadella, 1‑0 the final word against Pro Patria in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
A performance of 8.03 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad28 Sep 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Matteo Angeli, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match19 Sep 2026
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Cittadella have 3 straight wins of it.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Francesco Amatucci 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.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Marked 9.02. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Cittadella.
Match19 Sep 2026
It finished 2‑0, and it was Davide Castelli’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Cittadella.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
A performance of 8.03 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Davide Diaw gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad14 Sep 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market14 Sep 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Cittadella heard it as anything else.
Match12 Sep 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Davide Castelli. 2‑1 against Renate, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
The terraces14 Sep 2026
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad14 Sep 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Francesco D'Alessio was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.46. 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.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
A performance of 8.30 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Alessandro Lamesta 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Cittadella have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match5 Sep 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Cristian Bunino. 1‑0 against Virtus Verona, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Shots: 9. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Squad7 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cittadella this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The manager makes an example of Nicola Pavan
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad7 Sep 2026
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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad31 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cittadella this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Aug 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Defensive actions: 19, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Shots: 6. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Match29 Aug 2026
Nil-nil, and few chances worth the name. Pergolettese came to defend and left with exactly what they came for.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad24 Aug 2026
Alex Redolfi pulls a muscle — 17 days out
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 17 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Francesco Amatucci 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.
Boardroom24 Aug 2026
4 academy players handed senior numbers at Cittadella
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Market24 Aug 2026
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Diego Russo 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.
Market24 Aug 2026
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Riccardo Serafini has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Market24 Aug 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Flavio Cecconi is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad17 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cittadella this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
A welcome sight on the training pitch: Francesco D'Alessio has come through recovery and is pushing for a place again.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad10 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cittadella this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market10 Aug 2026
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Simone Rabbi has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Cittadella.
Market10 Aug 2026
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Market10 Aug 2026
24 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Alessio Vita has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
Market10 Aug 2026
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Davide Diaw’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market3 Aug 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Cittadella heard it as anything else.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Alessio Vita and Cittadella agree another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Francesco Amatucci 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.
Market3 Aug 2026
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Diego Falcinelli has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Cittadella.
Market3 Aug 2026
The name of Riccardo Stronati has come up in conversations Cittadella were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Market3 Aug 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.