“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.
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 7.98 for the rest of it.
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.
30 appearances at Pescara and the goals have stopped going in. Palermo lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 4‑1, Silvio Rossetti could afford to be generous.
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.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Joel Pohjanpalo will call it something else in private.
Something was said to Antonio Palumbo and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The dugout10 May 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Mattia Perin'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.
Goalkeepers do not get to make mistakes; they get to make goals. He made one, he knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
The dugout10 May 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑3 defeat, delivered by Silvio Rossetti to a room that had heard them before.
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.
Nobody at Palermo 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.
Nobody at Palermo 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.
Nobody at Palermo 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.
Position 3, 57 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Palermo heard it as anything else.
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.
13 shut-outs in 30 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Sebastiano Desplanches has been having a lot of them.
The dugout26 Apr 2027
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 Silvio Rossetti left the room before anybody could ask which.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Francesco Di Bartolo has his answer from Palermo; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Gabriel Strefezza. 1‑0 against Carrarese, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Palermo told Jacopo Segre something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Giosuè Grippa and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout19 Apr 2027
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.” Silvio Rossetti, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
The 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.
4 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Palermo can tell you which week it ends in.
“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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Palermo can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Palermo can tell you which week it ends in.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Palermo pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
“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 Palermo, and 6 appearances in 10 say he has earned the hearing.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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.
27 appearances at Pescara and the goals have stopped going in. Palermo lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
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.
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.
Empoli next, and one man in the Palermo dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Paolo Fiorentino 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Sergio Conte is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Michele Ruggiero 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Achille Lombardi 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.
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Silvio Rossetti to a room that had heard them before.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
“It 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.
Something was said to Gabriel Strefezza and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
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.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Silvio Rossetti after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Sampdoria defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
“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.
Level with 91 minutes on the clock, after an afternoon Palermo had all but put away. Arezzo will call it a point earned; the home dressing room will call it two given away, and both of them are right.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Niccolò Pierozzi has come out of that comparison in the side, and Palermo have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
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 Mattia Perin is on it.
1 for Jacopo Segre, marked 7.78, 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Palermo have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Palermo heard it as anything else.
13 clean sheets from 24 appearances at Pescara. 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.
The dugout1 Mar 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Mattia Perin'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 defender's mistake gets tidied up by somebody else; a goalkeeper's ends up in the net. He knew before the ball crossed the line, and so did everybody in the ground.
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.
12 shut-outs in 23 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Sebastiano Desplanches has been having a lot of them.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
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.
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.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. Joel Pohjanpalo has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.
13 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.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Südtirol? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
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 Vladyslav Kalitvintsev is on it.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Jacopo Segre wants continental football; whether Palermo can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Marked 9.48 — 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.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Palermo will try again when the window opens; Cagliari may not be selling by then.
Marked 8.10 — 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.
Lazio go through and Palermo go home, 0‑1 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Position 2, 41 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 2 arrived, 5 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
“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.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Atalanta is saying, and nobody at Palermo is enjoying the guessing.
“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 offer went to Cagliari 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.
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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Lecce have kept their man, and Palermo go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Position 2, 38 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
12 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑0, Silvio Rossetti could afford to be generous.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Antonio Palumbo trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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.
Successful dribbles: 21. 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.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Palermo will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Palermo people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The kind of year that ends with a name being read out in a hall. Palermo had the benefit of it every week and now have the problem of everybody else knowing.
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.
At 18 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.
3 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.
10 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.
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.
A 2‑1 win over Hellas Verona, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout28 Dec 2026
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.” Silvio Rossetti, on a 2‑1 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
“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.
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 7.87 for the rest of it.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Palermo can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Filippo Ranocchia. 1‑0 against Mantova, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
The fixture the rest of the division is looking forward to more than either of the sides in it. Both know a win changes the season and a defeat does not end it, which is what makes it hard to play.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Silvio Rossetti on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
2 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
1 for Jacopo Segre, marked 7.87, 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.
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Palermo will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Palermo heard it as anything else.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Palermo will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Palermo can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Emmanuel Gyasi. 1‑0 against Cesena, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
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.” Silvio Rossetti, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
“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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Palermo told Vladyslav Kalitvintsev something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Palermo will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Giosuè Grippa 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 dugout23 Nov 2026
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.” Silvio Rossetti chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Empoli? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 42 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
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.
Nobody at Palermo 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 Emmanuel Gyasi’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Palermo needing him to play as if none of it matters.
9 appearances at Pescara and the goals have stopped going in. Palermo lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Claudio Gomes has written the date down.
2 kept out from twelve yards, and a stadium that will describe each of them for twenty years. A goalkeeper needs one night like this in a career, and this was it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Palermo will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 29 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 Palermo heard it as anything else.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Silvio Rossetti on a 3‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Every signing waits for it and every press conference asks about it until it comes. It has come, Palermo have their man off the mark, and the second one is always easier.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Palermo know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Palermo will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Filippo Ranocchia scored, was marked 7.86, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
The board was up, the win was priced in, and then Arezzo scored. There is no worse minute to concede in and the ground emptied in the silence that follows one.
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.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
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.” Silvio Rossetti chose the glass-half-full version of 2‑2; the supporters left with the other one.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 47 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
15 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Palermo lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Gabriel Strefezza wants continental football; whether Palermo can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Giacomo Corona is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Patryk Peda has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Silvio Rossetti after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Nobody at Palermo 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.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Palermo will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
22 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Palermo lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
At 19 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Giangiacomo Magnani trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Palermo know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Francesco Di Bartolo has his answer from Palermo; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Antonio Palumbo has written the date down.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Palermo will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
32 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Palermo lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Palermo can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
8 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Palermo know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Palermo will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Up for the corner, and Jacopo Segre delivers — 7.95
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Jacopo Segre scored, was marked 7.95, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Pietro Ceccaroni 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: 15. 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Silvio Rossetti on a 3‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
The team at the top of the table next, and the honest measure of where this side actually is. Anybody can beat the club below them; the question is what happens against Pisa.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jérémy Le Douaron trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Palermo will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
13 combined actions and 7.13. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
“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.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Silvio Rossetti was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Palermo dressing room was either.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Avellino defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Südtirol next, and one man in the Palermo dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Palermo will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
1 for Filippo Ranocchia, marked 7.91, 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.
At 19 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Alfred Gomis’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Palermo needing him to play as if none of it matters.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 98 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Palermo close the window on a squad of their own making
7 in and 0 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Palermo heard it as anything else.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Empoli have kept their man, and Palermo go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
8 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.
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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Palermo know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 105 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Joel Pohjanpalo will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Palermo escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Joel Pohjanpalo provided it, and the 8.56 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 2‑2 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Gabriel Strefezza wants continental football; whether Palermo 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.
Palermo asked and Monza said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Marcello Conti 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. Daniele Basile is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
It is the quietest way a club tells you what its ambitions are. The money was asked for, the money was refused, and the people who work there every day now know exactly where they stand.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Gabriel Strefezza’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Palermo needing him to play as if none of it matters.
They sit in position 6 and they will be waiting. Away form is where a season shows its true character, and this side has a point to make about its own.
The offer from Eibar for Alfred Gomis 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.
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.
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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Antonio Palumbo signs something — a contract at Palermo or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A season-long audition: Bologna still own him, but the shirt and the minutes are Palermo's to give. A loan is a bet both clubs believe they are winning.
“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.
Pietro Ceccaroni 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 now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Napoli have kept their man, and Palermo go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The name of Alfred Gomis has come up in conversations Palermo were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
“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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
7 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 want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Palermo heard it as anything else.
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.
Still no offer on the table, and Tommaso Augello’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
“59 caps is more than I ever expected, and it is time somebody else had them.” At 34 he is finished with his country and nowhere near finished with Palermo.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Palermo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hugo Leonardo De Oliveira 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.