Marked for Ben Wodskou
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Jun 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Ben Wodskou is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Jun 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 IMT this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Jun 2027
At 27 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad1 Mar 2027
Tempers go at IMT
Ognjen Čančarević 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.
Squad1 Mar 2027
“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.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Vicky Kiankaulua 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
Steady
Market1 Mar 2027
“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.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Olakunle Olusegun 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.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Mamadou Maïga 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.
Squad1 Mar 2027
5 new faces, and Nizhniy Novgorod 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.
Squad1 Mar 2027
“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.
Market1 Mar 2027
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Luka Vešner Tičić’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market22 Feb 2027
IMT say no — this time
The offer from Nizhniy Novgorod for Ben Wodskou was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Squad22 Feb 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 IMT this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Feb 2027
The manager makes an example of Stefan Šapić
“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.
In brief
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Squad
A promise honoured for Moussa Sissako
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Squad
Words at IMT training over how hard people work
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Age has not caught Farid Boulaya yet — 7.95
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.95 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad16 Nov 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 IMT this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Ben Wodskou gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Ben Wodskou has just signed for IMT, and for once the answer mattered.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match14 Nov 2026
It finished 1‑0, and it was Farid Boulaya’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to IMT.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Stefan Šapić 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.