Cantù Fails to Respond: Frank Vitucci Calls for Immediate Reinforcements
Yet another loss for Acqua S. Bernardo Cantù, which also fell to Reggio Emilia and now sits alone at the bottom of the standings, and head coach Frank Vitucci expects immediate action from the transfer market. “We’ve seen this week that the club has shown a willingness to make the necessary adjustments,” he pointed out. “This is a matter Giofrè needs to address, as it falls within his purview; we certainly can’t just sit back and wait for everyone to wake up. Or for everyone to become what we haven’t been showing ourselves to be so far.”
The reference is to the latest move in the transfer market, made by general manager Simone Giofrè. On October 14, the club officially announced the signing of Osvaldas Olisevičius, a 200-centimeter Lithuanian forward born in 1993, who has played in Italy for Reggio Emilia and, since 2023, for Treviso. In his last season with the green-and-whites, he averaged 13.6 points per game. The player immediately won over the fans: after the loss in Trieste, he was one of the few to escape negative criticism on social media, along with Flagg.
Right after that game—a decisive loss on October 18—Vitucci called for deep reflection: “We’ll need to reflect deeply to get this team to react differently and approach games with the utmost responsibility on every possession and in every situation.” He also admitted that in that game the team had “been overwhelmed by the opponents’ initiative and offensive intensity” and that on offense it had been “lacking.”
The atmosphere surrounding the team is now extremely tense. After the game in Reggio Emilia—a 6:30 p.m. late game on the fifth matchday (the final score was 81–60 for the red-and-whites, with a humiliating 27–5 run in the fourth quarter)—many fans have given up hope: comments are multiplying on social media from those who take relegation to A2 for granted, while others are calling for immediate action by the club and, in some cases, the firing of Vitucci himself. The criticism also extends to the team’s roster, which many supporters deem too lacking in technical and athletic ability.
Even the preseason predictions were not encouraging. After the first four games, the Artificial Intelligence (Chat GPT Plus version), when queried by Sportal.it, had placed Cantù in second-to-last place in the final standings with 16 points, tied with Scafati. This prediction should be taken with a grain of salt, but it already indicated that fighting to avoid relegation was the most realistic goal for the Brianza-based team.
