Alberto Aquilani's Sassuolo began their 2026-27 Serie A season with a 2-1 defeat away against Atalanta on August 24, and in the aftermath the coach made a point of mentioning Darryl Bakola by name — a detail that carries more weight than the result itself.
Bakola is 18 years old. He is a midfielder in a Sassuolo side that currently sits 12th in the table with no points from one match. Those are the bare facts of his Serie A career so far. But the more instructive number is his average match rating of 7.20 from that opening fixture — a figure that places him among the more effective performers on the pitch despite the loss. In a defeat, a rating at that level suggests a player who contributed rather than merely participated.
Aquilani's public mention of Bakola after the Atalanta defeat is not incidental. Coaches in Serie A do not single out teenagers in post-match comments without purpose. The headline from Corriere dello Sport captured it directly: Aquilani said Sassuolo did not deserve to lose, and then he said "E Bakola..." — a trailing reference that implies the young midfielder was one of the reasons for that belief. Without the full quote available, the ellipsis does the work: it signals a coach who sees something worth protecting and developing.
Bakola also carries a Coppa Italia assist from 2026-27, earned in a competition separate from Serie A and not with Sassuolo in their current league context — a distinction worth noting, but also evidence that he arrived at this point in the season with competitive minutes already in his legs.
His AI profile rates him at 69 overall with a potential ceiling of 78. That gap of nine points is the analytical expression of what Aquilani appears to be seeing on the training ground: a player whose current output is real but whose ceiling has not yet been tested at this level. One Serie A match is too small a sample to draw conclusions about trajectory, but the rating from that match and the coach's public endorsement together suggest Bakola is not being eased in cautiously — he is being trusted.
Sassuolo's early-season task is straightforward: collect points quickly enough to avoid the kind of anxiety that can distort a young player's development. For Bakola, the more pressing question is whether Aquilani continues to give him the minutes to build on a promising opening, or whether the pressure of results forces a more conservative selection. The coach's comments after Bergamo suggest the answer leans toward the former.