The Sochi 2 Courier
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Vladislav Dys scores twice — 8.06
Two goals and a mark of 8.06 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
No sign of nerves from Alexandr Metsiev at 20 — 8.24
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Alexandr Metsiev did not need any: 8.24, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Mikhail Slepov in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sochi 2 this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match8 Aug 2026
Vladislav Dys sends Sochi 2 past Rubin Yalta
It finished 3‑2, and it was Vladislav Dys’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Sochi 2.
The terraces10 Aug 2026
The crowd has taken to Vladislav Dys
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.
Match8 Aug 2026
Sochi 2 settle it inside twenty minutes
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Rubin Yalta spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
Market10 Aug 2026
Sochi 2 and Roman Chenchikov are talking past each other
“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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Mikhail Slepov has had enough of the bench
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Sochi 2 will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Roman Chenchikov dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
In brief
- Market Igor Kalinin told to find a new club
- Squad Alexandr Metsiev is off the mark for Sochi 2
- Player ratings Roman Chenchikov runs at them all day