Marked for Ivan Kovrechenkov
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad28 Sep 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ivan Kovrechenkov
14 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Ural lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match26 Sep 2026
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Ufa, and it could have been more.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Market28 Sep 2026
Artem Mamin has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Ural they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market28 Sep 2026
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Match26 Sep 2026
Ural make it 3 in a row
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Ural have 3 straight wins of it.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Ural
Reziuan Mirzov 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 Sep 2026
Home is on Ítalo's mind
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Ural are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
Ilja Ishkov gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
In brief
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Player ratings
Léo Cordeiro was on a different afternoon to everybody else
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The dugout
The manager’s verdict
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Player ratings
Reziuan Mirzov beats them one at a time
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad21 Sep 2026
Ivan Kovrechenkov damages knee ligaments — 22 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 22 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market21 Sep 2026
KAMAZ come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Ural did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Léo Cordeiro in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ural this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Sep 2026
A row about effort at Ural
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Loizos Loizou was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 20. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The terraces21 Sep 2026
He is 22 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.
Match19 Sep 2026
Chaika made Ural work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad21 Sep 2026
200 games in these colours. Service of that kind gets rarer every season, and the crowd knows it.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Marked 7.92 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Ural had the best player on the pitch.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad14 Sep 2026
Ivan Kovrechenkov damages knee ligaments — 29 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 29 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
At 33 every good afternoon gets called a throwback, and this one was: 7.97, and nobody on the pitch better.
Boardroom14 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 15 signed and 15 gone
That is the business done at Ural until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Loizos Loizou 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.
Match12 Sep 2026
Three points for Ural, 1‑0 the final word against Rotor in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
The game went through Maxim Kuzmin — 6.97
Marked 6.97 on 11 actions at both ends of the pitch. Midfielders like this get described as unspectacular by people who have never tried to play against one.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad14 Sep 2026
9 new faces, and Ural are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Pavel Shuvalov on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.