Cuenca returns to Sporting and Antonio Casas joins him: two Córdoba-born signings, both reportedly out of Italy

Andrés Cuenca already knows the dressing room. He spent the second half of last season at Sporting de Gijón on loan, and according to reporting in Spain he is back, this time as a signing rather than a temporary guest.

He does not arrive alone. Antonio Casas is reported to be joining alongside him, and the two are described as the club's most recent additions.

The thread between them is geography. Both were born in the province of Córdoba and both were formed as footballers there, which is a neat piece of symmetry for a club on the other end of the peninsula.

The second thread is Italy. Both men are understood to be leaving Italian clubs to make the move, which is the sort of detail that usually comes attached to a paragraph of explanation. Here it does not.

What has not emerged is almost everything a reader would want next. The Italian clubs are not named. No transfer figure has been reported for either player. The length of the new contracts has not been disclosed.

Nor is there any indication of what Antonio Casas is actually expected to do at Sporting. Not a position, not a role, not a line about who he is competing with.

That leaves Cuenca as the one known quantity of the pair, and only because he has already done half a season in Gijón. A player the club has watched at close range for months is a different proposition from one signed off a scouting file, and Sporting have evidently decided they saw enough.

For Casas, the file is blank in public. He is a Córdoba-born footballer arriving from Italy, and that is the extent of what has been reported.

Two signings, one province, one country of departure, and a set of terms nobody has put on the record. The rest of it will have to come from the club, or from the team sheet.