Marked for Danila Lukinykh
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market26 Oct 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Zenit Penza is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Zenit Penza training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gadji Budunov 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.
Match24 Oct 2026
Rodina M left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Aslan Aushev gets it from the manager
“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 dugout26 Oct 2026
“I could talk about decisions and I could talk about luck. I will not. We lost.” The manager, 0‑2, and a press conference that lasted four minutes.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Nikita Kolesin
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 12. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.
Market26 Oct 2026
2 months left and the two sides are nowhere near each other. Every week this drags on takes money off what Zenit Penza could get for him.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match19 Oct 2026
Every point is an argument now for Zenit Penza
Position 14 and 5 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Market19 Oct 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.
Market19 Oct 2026
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Zenit Penza they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Match17 Oct 2026
9 matches without a win, and then this, against Arsenal Tula 2. Relief is a strange noise in a football ground and it was the only noise at the end.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Saif Nasser beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 23. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad19 Oct 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 Zenit Penza this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The terraces19 Oct 2026
At 22 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.
Match17 Oct 2026
A 1‑0 win over Arsenal Tula 2, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gleb Geikin was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market10 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market10 Aug 2026
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Yaroslav Terechev will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Zenit Penza the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Boardroom10 Aug 2026
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.
Market10 Aug 2026
Some transfers need a press campaign. This one needed a shirt with the old number on it. Danila Lukinykh is a Zenit Penza player again, and the town has its story of the summer.
Squad10 Aug 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 Zenit Penza this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
$3.0K was the most the club would pay and Ufa were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
Zenit Penza asked and Dinamo Vladivostok said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Market10 Aug 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Tikhon Silaev is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Match8 Aug 2026
Metallurg left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
In brief
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The dugout
The manager makes an example of Evgeny Yegorov
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Squad
Too much change too quickly at Zenit Penza
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The dugout
The view from the dugout