Marked for Dmitry Marinchenko
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad2 Nov 2026
Dmitry Marinchenko damages knee ligaments — 17 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 17 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market2 Nov 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Kuban Holding is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad2 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 Kuban Holding this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Dmitry Solovjov 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.
Match31 Oct 2026
Beaten 1‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Boardroom2 Nov 2026
150% of the income goes out in wages at Kuban Holding
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
The dugout2 Nov 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.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad2 Nov 2026
The award is a small thing with a heavy meaning: for four weeks nobody in this division did his job better. Kuban Holding have the trophy on a shelf and the player in the side.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad26 Oct 2026
24 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Kuban Holding lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Squad26 Oct 2026
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Anton Polorotov 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.
Match24 Oct 2026
0‑1 to Rostov 2, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
The dugout26 Oct 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.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Arseny Leskov after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.
Market26 Oct 2026
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Kuban Holding know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match28 Sep 2026
Position 12, 5 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 27. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match26 Sep 2026
5 matches without a win for Kuban Holding
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around Kuban Holding are no longer polite ones.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Sergey Serchenkov 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 Sep 2026
Words at Kuban Holding training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dmitry Solovjov 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.
Match26 Sep 2026
Beaten 0‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Nikolay Prisyazhnenko, and the manager let it.
Squad28 Sep 2026
14 new faces, and Kuban Holding 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.