Marked for Dmitry Vasiljev
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad18 Jan 2027
6 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Match16 Jan 2027
5 matches without a win for Orenburg
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around Orenburg are no longer polite ones.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Timofey Martynov 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.
Match16 Jan 2027
0‑2 to Lokomotiv Moscow, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Jordhy Thompson 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.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Player ratings18 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Market18 Jan 2027
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad21 Dec 2026
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at Orenburg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Du Queiróz 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.
Match19 Dec 2026
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Anatoly Bessonov to a room that had heard them before.
Player ratings21 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Renat Golybin's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Looking ahead21 Dec 2026
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Krasnodar in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad16 Nov 2026
Bogdan Ovsyannikov 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at Orenburg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jordhy Thompson 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 dugout16 Nov 2026
The manager makes an example of Jordhy Thompson
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Orenburg, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Renat Golybin's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
Danila Khotulev has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Orenburg 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.
Market16 Nov 2026
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Dmitry Vasiljev signs something — a contract at Orenburg or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Loan watch16 Nov 2026
The goals keep arriving from Daniil Antsiperov’s exile
3 goals in 12 games at Dinamo Vladivostok — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Orenburg updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Looking ahead16 Nov 2026
Next up at home: Spartak Moscow, who go into it in position 3. The kind of fixture a season is quietly built on or quietly loses its shape in.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match24 Oct 2026
Going 2 down does something to a side, and what it usually does is finish them. Not here. Orenburg rebuilt the afternoon goal by goal, and Dinamo Makhachkala had no answer to any of it.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.16, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words exchanged at Orenburg
Bogdan Ovsyannikov 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Jordhy Thompson 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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Anatoly Bessonov on a 3‑2 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Looking ahead26 Oct 2026
The leaders are next for Orenburg
Zenit top the table and they are coming into view. Nothing to lose, which is what every manager says before losing.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Maxim Rudakov: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Orenburg have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Yegor Nazarenko is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
A row about effort at Orenburg
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Du Queiróz was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Jersson González, and the manager let it.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Orenburg are still strangers to each other
9 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Bogdan Ovsyannikov's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Boardroom12 Oct 2026
Wages eat 90% of everything Orenburg earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Jhon Palacios asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Orenburg will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match3 Oct 2026
4‑1, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Match30 Sep 2026
Sevastopol ended it 0‑0. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Maxim Rudakov decides it from twelve yards
1 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
Match3 Oct 2026
The drought breaks for Orenburg
9 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Sochi were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
A defender's goal wins it for Orenburg — 7.83
1 for Dmitry Vasiljev, marked 7.83, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Orenburg can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
The terraces5 Oct 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Dmitry Vasiljev 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.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match3 Oct 2026
Sochi blown away early
There is a particular helplessness in conceding 2 times before the twentieth minute. Sochi tried to reorganise, Orenburg did not allow it, and the result was written long before it was confirmed.
In brief
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Squad
A row about effort at Orenburg
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Player ratings
Damián Puebla was on a different afternoon to everybody else
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Player ratings
Maxime Sivis was on a different afternoon to everybody else
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market3 Aug 2026
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Orenburg can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Damián Puebla commits to Orenburg for another 4 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words exchanged at Orenburg
Damián Puebla 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“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 Orenburg know it.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Orenburg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jordhy Thompson 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
A point taken on 87 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Dmitry Vasiljev
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Market3 Aug 2026
49 months and counting on Robert Mejía
Still no offer on the table, and Robert Mejía’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
Match1 Aug 2026
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.