“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 The request is on a desk at Baltika, and it is not being withdrawn.
Maxim Petrov 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.
Squad13 Dec 2027
Words at Baltika training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Derik Lacerda 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.
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Baltika will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 The request is on a desk at Baltika, and it is not being withdrawn.
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.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.73 for the rest of it.
Maxim Petrov 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Baltika will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Maxim Petrov 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.
Squad18 Oct 2027
Words at Baltika training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Derik Lacerda 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Baltika know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
30 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Akhmat lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Mohamed Konaté provided it, and the 8.44 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
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.
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.
Brian Mansilla 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.
“I watch every Akhmat game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Spartak Kostroma runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Baltika this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Ivan Belikov is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Derik Lacerda 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.
9 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.
5 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Dmitry Nikitin is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Maxim Petrov 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 Jun 2027
Words at Baltika training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Derik Lacerda 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Baltika will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Maxim Petrov 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.
Squad31 May 2027
Words at Baltika training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mingiyan Beveev 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Baltika this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Derik Lacerda 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.
Eldar Ćivić 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.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Words at Baltika training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mingiyan Beveev 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Baltika know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 76 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Eldar Ćivić 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.
Marked 8.08 — 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
A muscle injury sidelines Ivan Belikov for 16 days
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Baltika will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Brayan Gil signs something — a contract at Baltika or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.