The Sochi Sentinel
Match5 Sep 2026
6 matches without a win for Sochi
The run now stands at 6, and the questions being asked around Sochi are no longer polite ones.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Pavel Meleshin runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Sochi
Pavel Meleshin 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
No hiding place for Vladimir Iljin
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Vladimir Iljin, and the manager let it.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
The afternoon belonged to Kirill Kravtsov
7.64, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Sochi had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Alexandr Degtev
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Alexandr Degtev has come out of that comparison in the side, and Sochi have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
In brief
- Squad The armband comes off Pavel Meleshin
- Match Sochi and Krylya Sovetov cancel each other out