“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Oleksandriya can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Balázs Megyeri 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Shakhtar have kept their man, and Oleksandriya go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
It needed Mykola Kukharevych to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against Polissia, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Gualberto 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.
31 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Oleksandriya lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
0-3, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Oleksandriya this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Oleksandriya are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Papa Ndiaga Yade and Oleksandriya agree another 4 years.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.72, and 2 involvements.
Balázs Megyeri 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Fernando Henrique was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 93. Veres had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Gualberto has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Balázs Megyeri 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.
Conceding is one thing; the response is what tells you about a dressing room. Mykola Kukharevych had Oleksandriya level again within 4 minutes, and Epicentr never got to play with a lead at all.
The captaincy has been taken off Oleksandr Svatok. Oleksandriya will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Danylo Shevchuk was not hiding it after 2‑2, and nobody in the Oleksandriya dressing room was either.
Dynamo Kyiv next, and one man in the Oleksandriya dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Oleksandriya, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Fernando Henrique 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Oleksandr Kozak’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Oleksandriya needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Oleksandriya know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Oleksandriya would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 17 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.
Hussayn Touati 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Oleksandriya training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fernando Henrique 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.
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Danylo Shevchuk left the room before anybody could ask which.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Hussayn Touati trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Gualberto is 36 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Nobody at Oleksandriya is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
In brief
The dugoutAnton Drozd has become a man the manager trusts