Marked for Yaroslav Svanson
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market28 Dec 2026
“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.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 25. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match26 Dec 2026
Orenburg 2 make home a hard place to visit
10 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Orenburg 2 training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pavel Gorelov 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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Kirill Dudarin 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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
“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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market12 Oct 2026
“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.
Match10 Oct 2026
The wait goes on for Orenburg 2
5 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Oleg Nekrasov: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Orenburg 2 have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Nikolay Tyulenev is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Stanislav Poroikov 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.
Match10 Oct 2026
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 35. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match3 Oct 2026
The wait goes on for Orenburg 2
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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Stanislav Poroikov 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Ruslan Kul' 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.
Match3 Oct 2026
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Mikhail Pykhcheev, and the manager let it.