A 1‑0 win over Latina, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Vasilije Adžić, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.33
A mark of 8.33 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.
26 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 24 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Mattia Bani 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.
21 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Samuel Giovane 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Aljoša Vasić. 2‑0 against Catanzaro, 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.
39 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
27 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
A season average of 7.25 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Palermo know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
“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.
Emmanuel Gyasi 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 23 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Mattia Bani 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried 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 Palermo can pretend not to have heard.
28 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Vasilije Adžić did not need any: 7.84, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Mattia Bani 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.
“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 Palermo know it.
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.
Two goals and a mark of 8.45 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palermo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Giulio Anghileri is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Vasilije Adžić did not need any: 8.74, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palermo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Giosuè Grippa is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Palermo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mattia Bani 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.
At 20 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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Vasilije Adžić provided it, and the 9.51 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palermo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Three points for Palermo, 3‑2 the final word against Spezia in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Palermo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Emmanuel Gyasi 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.
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.
Vasilije Adžić, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 9.01
A mark of 9.01 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.
Mattia Bani 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.87, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Joel Pohjanpalo was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.70. 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 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.
In brief
The terracesThe press have found their man in Joel Pohjanpalo
28 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Vasilije Adžić, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.61
A mark of 7.61 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.
Tommaso Augello 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.
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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Mattia Bani 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.
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.
The terracesThe press cannot get enough of Emmanuel Gyasi
7Edition
The Palermo Courier
14 Sep 2026
From our football correspondentCrisis
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Vasilije Adžić, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.93
A mark of 8.93 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palermo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Palermo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mattia Bani 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.
At 20 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.
Renê Júnior is 37 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Everybody's debut is one of two stories and this was the other one. 5.76, and the only consolation available is that nobody's career has ever been decided by ninety minutes in a shirt he had just been given.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palermo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Palermo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Tommaso Augello 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.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palermo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at Palermo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mattia Bani 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.
Marked 8.74 — 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
5 new faces, and Palermo 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Palermo can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palermo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Antonio Palumbo commits to Palermo for another 3 years.
Boardroom24 Aug 2026
4 academy players handed senior numbers at Palermo
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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Palermo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Emmanuel Gyasi 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Marco Varnier has just signed for Palermo, and for once the answer mattered.
Mattia Bani was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Mattia Bani 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Palermo, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Lucas Villafañez is 34 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Braian Miranda arrives at 33 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.
“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 Palermo 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 Palermo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Palermo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Emmanuel Gyasi 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Joel Pohjanpalo trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.