Successful dribbles: 21. 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.
Amet Dugu 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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sevastopol know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“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 The request is on a desk at Sevastopol, and it is not being withdrawn.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
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.
Amet Dugu 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.
Artem Stepanovich 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Artem Stepanovich trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Kyzyltash next, and one man in the Sevastopol dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 9 combined actions and a mark of 6.54, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
9 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Leonid Zagrebelny, and the manager let it.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Vadim Barinov was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Sevastopol dressing room was either.
Nobody at Sevastopol 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.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Successful dribbles: 16. 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.
Something was said to Sergey Zuikov and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Vadim Barinov on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
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.
Daniil Kondakov, 18, plays like he has been here for years — 7.60
A mark of 7.60 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 18-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Artem Stepanovich 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.
“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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
9 new faces, and Sevastopol are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Successful dribbles: 14. 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Maxim Suprun trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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 Maxim Isaev is on it.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sevastopol can pretend not to have heard.
9 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Vadim Barinov could afford to be generous.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Sevastopol are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.