The hardest thing about being 18 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ivan Sorokin did not need any: 7.76, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Makar Vysochenko is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
The kind of year that ends with a name being read out in a hall. Spartak Moscow 2 had the benefit of it every week and now have the problem of everybody else knowing.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Spartak Moscow 2 this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 18 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.
3 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Matvey Kuznetsov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is 17 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
A 1‑0 win over Zvezda, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Vladlen Chizhov kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
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.
0‑1 to Cherepovets, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Vladlen Chizhov left the room before anybody could ask which.
One lapse, one goal, and ninety minutes of honest work counting for nothing. That is the job at Spartak Moscow 2, and it is a cruel one.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Nikolay Kobylin's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
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.
9 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Tver were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Matvey Kuznetsov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 18-year-old it feels ownership of. Ivan Sorokin has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Half the programme played, position 8, 21 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Vladlen Chizhov on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
At 18 he is being measured against the rest of the division's kids and coming out in front. The senior version of this award is where the club would like this to lead.
7 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.
5 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
At 18 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 16 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Yaroslav Melnikov is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Successful dribbles: 14. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Vladlen Chizhov was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Spartak Moscow 2 dressing room was either.
In brief
The dugoutIvan Sorokin knocks on the manager’s door