Marked for Konstantin Simakov
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market15 Feb 2027
“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 The request is on a desk at Torpedo Vladimir, and it is not being withdrawn.
Transfer targets15 Feb 2027
$1.0K settles it between the clubs for Kirill Belevskikh
Dinamo Kirov have accepted the money. What Torpedo Vladimir do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Transfer targets15 Feb 2027
Everything agreed with Mashuk, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Market15 Feb 2027
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Torpedo Vladimir have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Stanislav Utkin and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets15 Feb 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Words at Torpedo Vladimir training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alexandr Korenblyum 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 dugout15 Feb 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.
The dugout15 Feb 2027
Valery Arkhipenko has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Torpedo Vladimir 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
The terraces1 Feb 2027
Supporters organise against the Torpedo Vladimir board
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Market1 Feb 2027
“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 The request is on a desk at Torpedo Vladimir, and it is not being withdrawn.
Transfer targets1 Feb 2027
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Alania keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
The dugout1 Feb 2027
news_b_frozen_out_of_the_side
Squad1 Feb 2027
Nikita Kolganov 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.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Timur Abramov 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.
Boardroom1 Feb 2027
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
The dugout1 Feb 2027
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 dugout1 Feb 2027
Every squad has men who were signed by a particular manager and men who were merely inherited. Vladislav Sirotov is in the first group, and the man who wanted him here is no longer in the building.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings18 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 29. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market18 Jan 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Torpedo Vladimir can pretend not to have heard.
Match16 Jan 2027
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.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Stanislav Utkin and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nikita Kolganov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Match16 Jan 2027
Spartak Moscow 2 left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
“I could talk about decisions and I could talk about luck. I will not. We lost.” The manager, 1‑2, and a press conference that lasted four minutes.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Nikita Kolganov trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Looking ahead18 Jan 2027
The team at the top of the table next, and the honest measure of where this side actually is. Anybody can beat the club below them; the question is what happens against Dinamo Vologda.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market11 Jan 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Torpedo Vladimir can pretend not to have heard.
Market11 Jan 2027
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Sergey Chernenko will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Torpedo Vladimir the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Konstantin Popov and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Stanislav Utkin was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Match9 Jan 2027
0‑1 to Baltika 2, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
The dugout11 Jan 2027
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 Miroslav Moiseev left the room before anybody could ask which.
The dugout11 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.
The dugout11 Jan 2027
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Nikita Kolganov trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Player ratings11 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings21 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 57. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Market21 Dec 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Torpedo Vladimir can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings21 Dec 2026
Marked 7.69 at 21, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Player ratings21 Dec 2026
7.67, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Nikita Kolganov and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match19 Dec 2026
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Cherepovets spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at Torpedo Vladimir training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sergey Chernenko 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 Dec 2026
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑1, Miroslav Moiseev could afford to be generous.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market16 Nov 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market16 Nov 2026
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Sergey Chernenko will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Torpedo Vladimir the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Alexandr Komissarov, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.92
A mark of 7.92 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad16 Nov 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 Torpedo Vladimir this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 20. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nikita Kolganov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Match14 Nov 2026
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 93. Zenit 2 had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
Match16 Nov 2026
Half the programme played, position 12, 9 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
Match14 Nov 2026
It needed Alexandr Komissarov to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Zenit 2, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.