Returning Faces, Renewed Futures

The second day of camp brought a different sort of noise. Not the sharp whistles of the fitness drills, but the kind of low, excited hum that spreads when players realise they’re being watched and evaluated by standards higher than any the club had set before.

The board had pushed for new signings in the summer. Serie B, they reminded The Manager repeatedly, wasn’t the place for sentiment. But while the manager agreed the squad needed strengthening, he refused to uproot the core that had carried Arezzo here. “Culture first,” he’d told them. “Let the coaches elevate what we already have before we replace it.”

And so the real additions came in the staff room, not the dressing room. Cavalletto’s possession structures. Favaretto’s set-piece choreography. Lo Monaco’s positional detail. Grabbi’s ruthless finishing sessions. Rush and Bartoli’s physiological demands that made last season’s workload feel like a warm-up.

The Manager wanted to see what this group could become before deciding what it couldn’t.

That ethos was clear as the squad stepped onto the main pitch for a morning technical block. But the most intriguing stories belonged to the players who hadn’t been here at all last year – the ones returning from loans, carrying uncertainty and opportunity in equal measure.

They emerged quietly, without the swagger of new signings, but with something better: hunger. A chance to belong.

The Returnees

Alessandro Capello was one of the first to catch the eye. Not because of a flashy finish or a dramatic burst of pace, but through the subtle touches that marked him as a player who had seen a higher level — even if that felt like a lifetime ago.

Five years earlier he’d been a promising young attacker at Venezia in Serie B, carving out a reputation as a clever forward who could drop between the lines. His loan spell at Vicenza last season had been forgettable, but here, in the familiar aramanto shirt, he looked relaxed again.

During a rondo drill, Capello received a fizzed pass under pressure, killed it with a single cushioned touch, and slipped a disguised ball through the narrowest of gaps. A couple of teammates whistled in appreciation.

Capello wasn’t quick, but he was calm. He wasn’t a guaranteed starter, but he offered tactical elasticity: striker, No. 10, shadow forward. A bridge between systems. A player who, if given confidence, might yet rediscover the intelligence that once made him a sought-after prospect.

This camp would tell him whether that spark still lived.

Mattia Damiani trained with the eagerness of someone who had waited a very long time to be noticed. At Arzignano last season, he had been a constant – 37 games, a growing presence, a midfielder who read danger with remarkable clarity. Coaches there had labelled him one of Serie C’s best emerging defensive midfielders.

Now he was back, stepping into the shadow of Eklu but carrying no fear of it.

In a defensive shape drill, Damiani pressed, pivoted, and recovered with the snap of a player who thrived on structure. His tackling was crisp, his positioning textbook, his anticipation allowed him to hunt danger before it existed.

What he lacked was obvious too: his technical floor was lower than the rest. Passes were safe, occasionally loose, rarely ambitious. But that was exactly why the new staff were intrigued by him. Improvements to his ball control and a bit of offensive flair would turn him from a reliable understudy into a genuine Serie B option.

Mattia Damiani – ready for the next step?

Finally, there was Lorenzo Coccia, jogging carefully through warm-up lines with the slight hesitancy that follows every torn ACL. His loan at Pianese had lasted barely four matches before everything snapped in an instant. The injury stole eight months of his season, eight months of rhythm, confidence, and identity.

Now he was back at Arezzo, 24 years old, still raw, still developing – but still here.

As wing-back drills began on the far pitch, Coccia’s qualities reappeared in flashes: the clean movement down the line, the tidy first touch, the surprising balance for someone returning from major injury. His crossing, always one of his quiet strengths, found its bite again as he whipped a ball toward the near post that made the a couple of the coaches mutter something appreciative.

Righetti, the favourite for the starting role, watched him closely. Competition sharpens everyone.

Cavalletto approached Coccia midway through a drill, adjusting his starting body position by inches, giving words of encouragement. There was something earnest about him — a player who knew he might have fallen away last season, but who now had the staff and environment to climb again.

The Highlight New Signing

Wanting to rely on the promotion squad never meant shutting the door on improvement – and in Gabriele Corbo, arriving as a free agent from Pescara, he was one addition too valuable to ignore. Where Arezzo’s existing centre-backs were fighters, markers, and space-protectors, Corbo brought something different: a quiet, cultured assurance on the ball. He didn’t announce himself loudly. No shouts, no theatrics. Instead, there were small moments – a cushioned touch under pressure, a disguised pass threaded between two midfielders, a calm step into space that rebalanced the entire structure. Each one drew the same reaction from the staff: a subtle, involuntary intake of breath.

That composure sharpened into something more pronounced once the 11v11 work began. Receiving on the right of a back three, Corbo cushioned a firm pass, drew in the first presser, then rolled him with a simple shift of the shoulders. Last season, that scenario would have ended with a backward pass or a hopeful ball down the line. Corbo instead punched a vertical pass between the lines, straight into Pattarello’s stride, turning defence into progression with a single action. It was the clearest sign yet of why he was the only incoming expected to start immediately: not because he replaces what Arezzo have, but because he adds what they lacked — a defender who can knit the system together.

Squad Players With Something to Prove

Strengthening without disrupting meant looking for profiles — not reputations. Players who could grow within the machine rather than bend it. None of the next arrivals were signed to start immediately, but each walked onto the training pitches with the same expression: the awareness that opportunity lives in the gaps between a coach’s trust and a teammate’s consistency.

The staff called them the “competition players”: not guaranteed minutes, but guaranteed to raise standards.

Every pre-season has a player who surprises you before you’ve even had the chance to watch them properly. This time, it was Manuel Rosetti.

During a transitional drill, Rosetti snapped into a tackle, carried the ball out of pressure with a feint that looked almost accidental, then threaded a pass through a crowded lane that split two defenders cleanly. It made Cavalletto straighten. It made Grabbi turn his head. It made The Manager scribble onto his clipboard.

Rosetti has that blend you can’t coach: agility, bravery, and an early sense of rhythm. His left foot adds balance to the midfield rotations; his anticipation helps him intercept passes others wouldn’t read; and his energy fills the pitch in ways the data began to reflect immediately.

He’s not ready to start.
But he feels like someone who eventually will.

At 21, his ceiling sits higher than most in the squad – and the new coaching staff know it. Several of them have quietly marked him as a “follow closely” player for the season.

Further down the pitch, the goalkeepers were working through their drills. In that group, Edoardo Piana stood out immediately.

Trombini remains the No.1, but Piana moved through his footwork drills with a calmness that suggested he wasn’t intimidated by the hierarchy. Sharp low saves, clean handling, distribution that – while a little safe – rarely strayed wide of its target.

During a crossing drill he claimed three high balls in a row, each time punching or catching with authority. It drew quiet admiration from the coaching staff.

That word — presence — is why he was signed.
Twelve clean sheets for Monopoli last season showed he can handle pressure.
Here, he’s the long-term vision for a position that has lacked succession planning.

If a veteran arrives, he may go on loan.
But the bigger picture remains unchanged:
Piana is the future option, learning the structure before growing into it.

The first thing you noticed about Niccolò Pietra wasn’t a pass or a touch – it was the way he moved through the warm-up lanes. Tall, elastic, balanced in his stride. A midfielder with a frame built for Serie B even if his experience wasn’t. Carpi never handed him a single appearance last season, which raised eyebrows internally, but that concern softened the moment he stepped into the first possession drill.

Receiving under pressure, he opened his body cleanly, using his size and physical presence to shift the ball away from the press with a simple, unfussy touch. Cavalletto paused the drill, made a small approving gesture – the kind he rarely gave on day one – and let play continue.

In tight spaces Pietra showed the raw qualities the recruitment team had bet on: a tidy first touch, long strides that let him glide past pressure, and a shot from distance that nestled into the top corner during shooting patterns. Nothing spectacular, nothing fully formed – but everything mouldable.

He isn’t here to displace anyone.
He’s here because the system can shape him.

A development piece with the physical profile and mentality to become exactly what the midfield evolves into next.

If Rosetti is the surprise, Edoardo Vascotto is the project — but a fascinating one.

Towering at 6’3”, he carries himself like a centre-back until you watch him take his first touch. Soft, controlled, measured. Then comes the pass: crisp, purposeful, fired into feet with the confidence of someone who already knows his role.

During pivot drills, Cavalletto stopped play to adjust his body orientation, and Vascotto absorbed the instruction instantly, correcting the angle on his very next repetition. That’s the determination, the decision-making, the mentality that made him stand apart despite being the least experienced midfielder on the pitch.

But he’s raw.
Very raw.

His positioning drifts, his concentration lapses, and the physical battles of Serie B are steps above what he has ever faced.

A loan is likely – necessary, even. But the ingredients are there: passing range, first-touch security, tackling aggression, and a frame that could anchor the midfield for years if his development track holds.

He’s not the present.

But he might be part of the future the club eventually pivots around.

The Recruitment Unease – A Fine Line Between Faith and Risk

For all the calm inside the training camp, there is a different tone outside it. Local press columns have grown sharper by the week, each one circling back to the same anxiety: Has Arezzo done enough? In a division where established clubs reload aggressively and relegation fears sharpen early, the quiet summer has become the story the town can’t quite make peace with.

Names are whispered, positions highlighted, gaps underlined.
Is Cianci really a Serie B striker?
Can Guccione’s legs give him one more year?
Where’s the winger to help Djamanca support Pattarello and Tavernelli?
Are the full-backs ready for this level?

The list goes on, each point valid, each one delivered with the implicit comparison to clubs who have spent far more aggressively.

The Manager was handed a transfer budget believed to be around £250,000 — modest, but real — and yet not a penny of it has been spent. The phones are quiet. So is the rumour mill. And supporters, who respect the culture he’s built but know too well the gulf between Serie C and Serie B, have begun to grow restless.

The truth is more complicated than either side wants to admit.

Players deemed to be at Serie B level

He sees the squad differently from the outside world. To him, this isn’t stubbornness or naivety; it’s timing. Recruitment is a game of opportunity as much as resources. Spend for the sake of spending and you interrupt the machine he has worked hard to tune. Wait patiently, and the right upgrade – the kind that actually shifts the trajectory of a team – might fall into reach.

Inside the camp, you can sense that tension.
The players feel it.
The staff feel it.
Even new Assistant Manager Cavalletto, in quieter moments, has acknowledged, “One or two more profiles would help.”

A new winger is the most obvious missing piece: someone to complement Djamanca on one flank and provide genuine rotation for Pattarello and Tavernelli, who carried too much load last season.

The midfield is another open question, especially with Guccione — beloved, experienced, intelligent — trying to coax sharpness back into legs that have carried him through more than a decade of hard football. His shin splints last year stole three months from him. Nobody knows yet what they left behind.

On both flanks, the full-back depth remains a gamble – not catastrophic, but certainly fragile.

So the question lingers in the air, whispered at bars, dissected on message boards, muttered by supporters leaning over railings at training:
Is Throwing Copper being prudent? Or reckless?

Is he protecting the club’s budget with admirable discipline…
or rolling into Serie B with blind faith in a group that might not be ready for the leap?

It’s the tightrope every newly promoted club walks.
Spend too soon, and you could regret it by October.
Wait too long, and you regret it by September.

The Manager has chosen patience.
Whether that becomes wisdom or hubris will be written in the opening months of the season.

For now, the camp remains calm.
Outside it, the noise grows.