Marked for Vasiliy Sovpel
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market21 Sep 2026
Only the photograph left for Viktor Ziabko
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Viktor Ziabko will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Okzhetpes the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words exchanged at Okzhetpes
Vasiliy Sovpel and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Zakhar Porokh is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Okzhetpes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Vladislav Vasiljev 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.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
Mohammed Ensebaev has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Okzhetpes will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market10 Aug 2026
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Okzhetpes they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Boardroom10 Aug 2026
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Words exchanged at Okzhetpes
Dmitriy Borodin and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
Okzhetpes asked and Kairat said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Match8 Aug 2026
Oralkhan Ömirtaev scored, and precious little else went right: 1‑2 to Atyrau, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Market10 Aug 2026
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Maxim Akhmetov has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market10 Aug 2026
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Marat Nurgaliev has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Market10 Aug 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Dauren Murtazaev is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The dugout10 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Vasiliy Sovpel, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Zhansūltan Mūkhametzhanov did not need any: 7.75, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
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
Dmitriy Borodin 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
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.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 2‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
Zhetysu have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.