Marked for Alexandr Belyaev
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market28 Jun 2027
The offer from Kvant for Alexey Larin was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Market28 Jun 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.
Transfer targets28 Jun 2027
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Ufa keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad28 Jun 2027
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.
Transfer targets28 Jun 2027
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.
Squad28 Jun 2027
Alexandr Balakhonov and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad28 Jun 2027
Vyacheslav Bezzubov has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
The dugout28 Jun 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.
The dugout28 Jun 2027
Alexey Larin asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad19 Apr 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Evgeni Chizhov
23 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Torpedo Miass lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market19 Apr 2027
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Torpedo Miass is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad19 Apr 2027
Vladimir Uljanovskiy 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.
The dugout19 Apr 2027
“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.
Squad19 Apr 2027
Alexandr Balakhonov 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.
Boardroom19 Apr 2027
Wages swallow 89% of the Torpedo Miass income
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
The dugout19 Apr 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 Torpedo Miass, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Market19 Apr 2027
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Torpedo Miass know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The dugout19 Apr 2027
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Torpedo Miass. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market4 Jan 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Torpedo Miass can pretend not to have heard.
The dugout4 Jan 2027
Alexandr Belyaev: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Torpedo Miass have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Vladimir Uljanovskiy and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Alexandr Balakhonov 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.
The dugout4 Jan 2027
The manager makes an example of Ivan Kotelnikov
“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.
The dugout4 Jan 2027
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Torpedo Miass. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The dugout14 Dec 2026
Makar Makarov: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Torpedo Miass have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market14 Dec 2026
“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 Torpedo Miass, and it is not being withdrawn.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Semyon Stolbov, and the manager let it.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Maksim Tsaryov 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.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
Alexey Larin asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Match14 Dec 2026
Continental football is in reach for Torpedo Miass
16 points from position 5. The title is somebody else’s business and the drop is somebody else’s problem; what is left is the argument about passports.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Boardroom30 Nov 2026
Wages eat 185% of everything Torpedo Miass earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Denis Zamyatin 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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Evgeny Ibragimov 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.
The dugout30 Nov 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.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Torpedo Miass, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Squad30 Nov 2026
“I did not sign to watch. Nobody does.” The oldest complaint in the game, and Torpedo Miass will have to answer it with minutes or with a move.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market2 Nov 2026
“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 Torpedo Miass, and it is not being withdrawn.
Boardroom2 Nov 2026
Wages swallow 185% of the Torpedo Miass income
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
Squad2 Nov 2026
A muscle injury sidelines Maksim Tsaryov for 14 days
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Torpedo Miass will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
The dugout2 Nov 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.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
Dmitry Kuzmin knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dmitry Kuzmin trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market2 Nov 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad17 Aug 2026
Vladimir Uljanovskiy and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Match15 Aug 2026
Grigory Borisenko scored, and precious little else went right: 1‑3 to Kaluga, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Transfer targets17 Aug 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.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
“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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Evgeny Ibragimov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑3 defeat, delivered by Evgeni Alexandrov to a room that had heard them before.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
A loan move for Amir Alizade is in the works
Torpedo Miass have made the call to Sibir. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Squad17 Aug 2026
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Shots: 14, not one of them in. A centre forward is paid for one thing, and on this evidence he has forgotten which thing it is.