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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Yuri Rocchetti 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.
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.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Davide Bruno could afford to be generous.
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 had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Potenza, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Beaten 2‑3, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Potenza training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuri Rocchetti 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.
Salernitana held the lead for 1 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. Potenza answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Potenza told Jacopo Murano something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 2‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Agostino Camigliano’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Potenza needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Antonino De Marco 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
Words at Potenza training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuri Rocchetti 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.
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.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Davide Bruno after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Catania? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Salernitana next, and one man in the Potenza dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Words at Potenza training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuri Rocchetti 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 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 Manuele Castorani is on it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Potenza know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
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 Gabriele Selleri has written the date down.
He looks like a man who lives here now rather than one who is working here. It took most of a season, and at Potenza the difference is visible from the back of the stand.
Luca Petrungaro 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Potenza training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuri Rocchetti 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.
He is 23 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.
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.
Cavese held the lead for 3 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. Potenza 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 Potenza know it.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of João Paulo
Two goals and a mark of 8.21 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Luca Petrungaro and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Potenza training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuri Rocchetti 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 23 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.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Antonis Siatounis scored, was marked 7.68, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Potenza this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yuri Rocchetti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Davide Bruno was not hiding it after 1‑1, and nobody in the Potenza dressing room was either.
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.
“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 Potenza, and it is not being withdrawn.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yuri Rocchetti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Madryn have kept their man, and Potenza go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
100 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.
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 dugout14 Sep 2026
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 2‑3 Davide Bruno 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 Potenza, and it is not being withdrawn.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Potenza close the window on a squad of their own making
14 in and 3 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Potenza training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuri Rocchetti 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.
6 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.
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.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Atlético Tucumán is saying, and nobody at Potenza is enjoying the guessing.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yuri Rocchetti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Davide Bruno on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Gianluca D'Auria signs something — a contract at Potenza or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
1 academy players handed senior numbers at Potenza
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.
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 academy exists for exactly this morning. Alfonso Barone 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.
A loan enquiry to Atlético Tucumán: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
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.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Potenza has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
They sit in position 2 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.
A manager forgives a bad Saturday far more readily than a bad Tuesday, because one of them he can explain and the other one he chose. The reports this week have not been good.
Luca Petrungaro 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 Yuri Rocchetti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Potenza are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Sorrento keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Cremonese have kept their man, and Potenza go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Flavio Parisi 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. Giacomo Medici 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. Leonardo Russo 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. Adriano Troisi is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Gianluca D'Auria 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 Yuri Rocchetti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Still no offer on the table, and Niko Kirwan’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.