$3.2M was the most the club would pay and Venezia 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.
Stefano Moreo 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.
1‑2 to AC Milan, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad31 Aug 2026
8 new faces, and Pisa 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Gianluca Alessi after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brando Bettazzi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Juan Guillermo Cuadrado’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Pisa needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Pisa offered $11.1M; 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.
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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Stefano Moreo 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 music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
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 0‑4 defeat, delivered by Gianluca Alessi to a room that had heard them before.
Pisa have gone to Venezia 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.
The phone has started ringing about Francesco Coppola again, and this time the name on the line is Parma. Pisa are listening politely and promising nothing.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mehdi Léris 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Arturo Calabresi’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Pisa needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Stefano Moreo 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 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 Pisa hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Valentino Fiorini 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Marco Palmieri 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. Ruggero De Simone is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
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 want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Pisa heard it as anything else.
Mattéo Tramoni 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Stefano Moreo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Pisa, another week without a signature from Stefano Moreo.
Squad3 Aug 2026
7 new faces, and Pisa 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.