90 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Asteras lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Asteras can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Asteras is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Asteras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Cyriel Dessers has improved at 33, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Kyrylo Kovalets will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Epicentr the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Epicentr can pretend not to have heard.
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.
Oleksandr Klymets 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.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Epicentr, and it is not being withdrawn.
The phone has started ringing about Kyrylo Kovalets again, and this time the name on the line is Oleksandriya. Epicentr are listening politely and promising nothing.
Kyrylo Kovalets 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.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Words at Epicentr training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ihor Kyriukhantsev 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Epicentr know it.
33 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Epicentr lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Epicentr can pretend not to have heard.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Oleksandr Klymets and Epicentr agree another 3 years.
Kyrylo Kovalets 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 55 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 34 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
0‑3 to Dynamo Kyiv, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
The terraces30 Aug 2027
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 8 of the 31 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Epicentr this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The words a physio says slowly. 62 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 41 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Epicentr can pretend not to have heard.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
18 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
70 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Epicentr lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 48 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Epicentr this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
77 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Epicentr lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Epicentr will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Kyrylo Kovalets 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.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Epicentr has been clear about where Yevhen Zaporozhets stands, which is more than many ever get.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Kyrylo Kovalets signs something — a contract at Epicentr or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The words a physio says slowly. 24 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.
0‑2 away to the standard of KAA Gent. Nobody will pretend this was a scandal; the gap is real, it is measurable, and closing it is a project rather than a team talk.
Kyrylo Kovalets 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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at Epicentr training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ihor Kyriukhantsev 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Ivan Bendera has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.