Marked for Alexis Zelarayán
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Oct 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Maksims Kopilovs
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Ryazan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
No sign of nerves from Nikita Satarov at 21 — 8.28
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Nikita Satarov did not need any: 8.28, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“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 Ryazan know it.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Tempers go at Ryazan
Evgeny Yevgenjev 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Denis Gnedoy is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
The terraces12 Oct 2026
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad5 Oct 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Maksims Kopilovs
24 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Ryazan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
No sign of nerves from Maxim Mishutin at 21 — 7.71
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Maxim Mishutin did not need any: 7.71, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Squad5 Oct 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 Ryazan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Wages eat 702% of everything Ryazan earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
The terraces5 Oct 2026
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Match3 Oct 2026
Znamya Truda made Ryazan work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Alexis Zelarayán was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.72. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Marked 8.06 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Miłosz Rogula 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.