Aquilani’s claim at the end of the match won against Venezia was not thrown out there by chance: «We ended the match with five under on the pitch while they didn’t even have one».
The coach was right to point this out. Thus he reminded everyone that this Catanzaro is not a team built to fight for Serie A, but pursues the double objective of consolidating the category without suffering and valorising the young players in the squad (owned or on loan), which then also means obtaining the economic resources linked to the playing time of Italian players born from 2004 onwards. The playing time is a target of almost all companies that do not aim for promotion, so there is nothing unique in the direction desired by the owner. The good thing, however, is that these young players in yellow and red are proving to be at least as valuable as the senators who led the Eagles in the previous two seasons and are slowly becoming more and more integrated. In short, time was needed, but evidently DS Polito’s choices in the first phase of the transfer market were right.
Against Venezia the young players had space for a total of 315 minutes without counting (because they are not worth it) the six added time games played by Bashi, making his debut for the Albanian national team, and the three by Liberali, who had never taken over from “Ceravolo” until Sunday. Never before had the 300′ threshold been exceeded thanks to the 90 conceded to Favasuli (also voted MVP of the match by the fans through the club’s social media), the second half played by Nuamah, Alesi’s quarter of an hour and Cisse’s 75, on this occasion less phenomenal than usual, perhaps due to the efforts of three matches in eight days and the excellent marking of a strong defender like Schingtienne who was always helped in the doubles by Hainaut.
In total, Catanzaro have so far put together 2,737 minutes as Under players, an average of almost 249 per game in a range between the 174 of Monza and the 315 with Venezia which exceeded the 298 of Reggio Emilia.
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