Marked for Valentin Dimitrov
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match11 Sep 2028
Slonim up to position 3
36 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Squad11 Sep 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Slonim may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad11 Sep 2028
Tempers go at Slonim
Diago Fernández 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.
Boardroom11 Sep 2028
No signings allowed at Slonim
The manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
Market11 Sep 2028
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Squad11 Sep 2028
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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Aug 2028
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Slonim have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Tempers go at Slonim
Dmitriy Vechorko 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.
Squad21 Aug 2028
The manager makes an example of Egor Petrov
“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.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match19 Aug 2028
A 2‑2 draw with Ostrovets leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Squad21 Aug 2028
The team sheet said everything about Dmitriy Sai
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Dmitriy Sai.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad27 Mar 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Slonim this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom27 Mar 2028
No signings allowed at Slonim
The manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
Squad27 Mar 2028
Kirill Krutorozhkin 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad18 Oct 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Slonim this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad18 Oct 2027
Words at Slonim training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christoph Ochrana 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.
Market18 Oct 2027
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Egor Petrov’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.