“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Ryazan, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Artem Borovitskiy will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Ryazan the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Ryazan, and it is not being withdrawn.
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.
Svyatoslav Tses' 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.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Ryazan pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
“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.
The terraces8 Jan 2029
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 9 of the 25 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Alexandr Golovnya scored, was marked 7.16, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
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.
6 goals in one match, Alexandr Golovnya on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Ryazan and Strogino.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Sergi Abramishvili has come out of that comparison in the side, and Ryazan have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
In brief
SquadWords at Ryazan training over how hard people work
Player ratingsAn afternoon Ivan Petrov will want back
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Ryazan can pretend not to have heard.
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.
Nobody at Ryazan will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
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.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Rodina M? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Svyatoslav Tses' 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.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
A 1‑0 win over Dinamo St Petersburg, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Marked 8.28 — 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.
Squad16 Oct 2028
Words at Ryazan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Murad Amirbekov 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.
50 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.
The terraces28 Aug 2028
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 7 of the 25 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
Svyatoslav Tses' 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.
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.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Marked 5.28. Nothing he attempted worked and by the hour mark he had stopped attempting much, which is the part a manager notices rather than the mistakes.
78 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.
Yaroslav Martynyuk 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.
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
8 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
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.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Rotor 2? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Ryazan know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.