Yegor Pogostnov 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.
Squad10 May 2027
Words at SKA Khabarovsk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kamran Aliev 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.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Yaroslav Grebenkin trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Islam Imamov signs something — a contract at SKA Khabarovsk or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at SKA Khabarovsk is running low.
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Vlad Anokhin has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at SKA Khabarovsk is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Yegor Pogostnov 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.
A change in the dugout is not one story, it is twenty-five of them. This is Mitch Clark's: he was somebody's player, and now he has to be somebody else's, starting from nothing.
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.
Yegor Pogostnov 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 manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Vadim Vshivkov is on it.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
In brief
SquadIgor Shkolik has seen what the next man earns
Yegor Pogostnov 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.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Kamran Aliev 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.
There was no pressure on him and nowhere he had to be. SKA Khabarovsk lost a goal to a decision that took half a second and will be discussed all week.
In brief
The dugoutStepan Melnikov is still being punished for one mistake
Player ratingsYegor Mosin beats them one at a time
Yegor Pogostnov 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 Kamran Aliev was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jacobo Alcalde trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Islam Imamov signs something — a contract at SKA Khabarovsk or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
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.
Two goals and a mark of 8.85 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“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; SKA Khabarovsk are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SKA Khabarovsk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Torpedo Moscow left with the points after a 2‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at SKA Khabarovsk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kamran Aliev 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 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.