Marked for Mladen Kovačević
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad28 Sep 2026
15 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad28 Sep 2026
A falling-out at Zhetysu
Serikzhan Muzhikov and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad28 Sep 2026
He looks like a man who lives here now rather than one who is working here. It took most of a season, and at Zhetysu the difference is visible from the back of the stand.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market7 Sep 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Aris is saying, and nobody at Zhetysu is enjoying the guessing.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Zhetysu training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alan Chochiev 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.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Zhetysu are still strangers to each other
17 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Squad7 Sep 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 Zhetysu this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.