Marked for Vasiliy Sovpel
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad28 Dec 2026
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Okzhetpes will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad28 Dec 2026
44 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Okzhetpes lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad28 Dec 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Okzhetpes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
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Squad
Words at Okzhetpes training over how hard people work
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad9 Nov 2026
A fracture rules Diego Arismendi out for 55 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Okzhetpes will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad9 Nov 2026
The words a physio says slowly. 96 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Vasiliy Sovpel was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
In brief
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Squad
Words at Okzhetpes training over how hard people work
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Okzhetpes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Nicholas Ablido falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Loan watch21 Sep 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Okzhetpes, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad3 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Vasiliy Sovpel and Okzhetpes agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad3 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Okzhetpes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
A move Gosiame Ngobeni would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Gosiame Ngobeni is living that version at Okzhetpes, and it tends to show in the first month.
Market3 Aug 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Okzhetpes have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Okzhetpes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dmitriy Borodin is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Match1 Aug 2026
Ivan Kuzmichev scored, and precious little else went right: 1‑2 to Atyrau, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Market3 Aug 2026
Ivan Kuzmichev is free to find somewhere else
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Okzhetpes has been clear about where Ivan Kuzmichev stands, which is more than many ever get.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.09, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Market3 Aug 2026
49 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.