From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market15 Nov 2027
“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.
Squad15 Nov 2027
57 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad15 Nov 2027
53 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad8 Nov 2027
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Zhetysu have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad8 Nov 2027
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Zhetysu, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Market8 Nov 2027
The name of Patrick Wood keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Zhetysu say nothing, which says plenty.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad8 Mar 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Serikzhan Muzhikov commits to Zhetysu for another 2 years.
Market8 Mar 2027
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Market8 Mar 2027
The shirt still fits. Baurzhan Logvinenko is back at Zhetysu, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
Market8 Mar 2027
The shirt still fits. Azat Baizhanov is back at Zhetysu, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
Market8 Mar 2027
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market12 Oct 2026
Ädilkhan Dobai has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Zhetysu they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad12 Oct 2026
A window away with the national side, and a shirt at Zhetysu that briefly doubles as an advertisement. A call-up flatters the player and the club that built him in the same breath.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Mladen Kovačević has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.