Marked for Estevan
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match8 May 2027
4 matches without a win for Okzhetpes
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Okzhetpes are no longer polite ones.
Squad10 May 2027
David Semenchuk 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.
Match8 May 2027
Okzhetpes cannot find the net
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Match8 May 2027
Ordabasy left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout10 May 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Matvey Fedorov, and the manager let it.
Squad10 May 2027
Home is on Estevan's mind
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Okzhetpes are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The dugout10 May 2027
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Islambek Dosmagambetov left the room before anybody could ask which.
Squad10 May 2027
Words at Okzhetpes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Antony Dalbello 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.
Looking ahead10 May 2027
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Oralkhan Ömirtaev’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Okzhetpes needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad8 Mar 2027
David Semenchuk 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.
Transfer targets8 Mar 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Market8 Mar 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Askhat Dosmagambetov has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market8 Mar 2027
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Nurbol Nurgaliev has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Market8 Mar 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Askhat Shomko has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market8 Mar 2027
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Rinat Nurgaliev is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Player ratings8 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 18. 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.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Estevan wants to go home
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Okzhetpes know it.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Too much change too quickly at Okzhetpes
8 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad18 Jan 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 Okzhetpes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Okzhetpes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dmitriy Borodin 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.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Home is on Estevan's mind
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Okzhetpes are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad21 Dec 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Vladimir Vomenko
18 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Okzhetpes lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Dmitriy Borodin 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.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Estevan remains an outsider
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Okzhetpes would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad23 Nov 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Vladimir Vomenko
47 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Okzhetpes lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Boardroom23 Nov 2026
Qualification is done, and next season the floodlights come on for something bigger. A stage for the players, oxygen for the accounts and a passport for everybody else.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Words exchanged at Okzhetpes
Dmitriy Borodin 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market16 Nov 2026
Viktor Ziabko has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Okzhetpes they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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 Okzhetpes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Erick Crispim gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Erick Crispim has just signed for Okzhetpes, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad16 Nov 2026
A row about effort at Okzhetpes
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dmitriy Borodin was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad16 Nov 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Erick Crispim and Okzhetpes agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Market16 Nov 2026
He is 20, and the scouting reports agree on the only line that matters: the ceiling. Signings like this are lottery tickets written by professionals.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market9 Nov 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Okzhetpes is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Transfer targets9 Nov 2026
Everything agreed with another club, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Vasiliy Sovpel and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at Okzhetpes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dmitriy Borodin 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.
Market9 Nov 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Squad9 Nov 2026
A window away with the national side, and a shirt at Okzhetpes that briefly doubles as an advertisement. A call-up flatters the player and the club that built him in the same breath.