Marked for Dmitry Khraptsov
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match7 Aug 2032
Khimik will want this one forgotten quickly: 4‑1, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Uralets-TS were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Transfer targets9 Aug 2032
The deal with Rodina is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Squad9 Aug 2032
“The easiest signature of my career.” David Tsallagov and Uralets-TS agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Transfer targets9 Aug 2032
Uralets-TS asked and Volgar said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Boardroom9 Aug 2032
Wages eat 204% of everything Uralets-TS 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.
Squad9 Aug 2032
Mathis Loudière 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 dugout9 Aug 2032
The manager makes an example of Gleb Kalinin
“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.
Player ratings9 Aug 2032
A performance of 8.28 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings9 Aug 2032
Marked 8.21 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market2 Aug 2032
Hassan Suqrat hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Uralets-TS can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom2 Aug 2032
The instruction came from the boardroom and the dugout did not agree with it. Somebody will go, the fee will be called good business, and the manager will spend the season rebuilding around the space.
Squad2 Aug 2032
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” David Tsallagov commits to Uralets-TS for another 3 years.
Squad2 Aug 2032
David Tsallagov 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.
Squad2 Aug 2032
A row about effort at Uralets-TS
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gleb Kalinin was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Boardroom2 Aug 2032
No fees may be paid for anybody, whatever the squad needs. Every rumour about this club until it lifts is a rumour about a deal that cannot be done.
Player ratings2 Aug 2032
Gleb Kalinin did the work nobody counts — 7.15
10 combined actions and 7.15. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Player ratings2 Aug 2032
Successful dribbles: 15. 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.
Transfer targets2 Aug 2032
A loan enquiry to Volna: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad5 Jan 2032
21 goals and a season average of 7.24. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
Market5 Jan 2032
“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.
Squad5 Jan 2032
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Uralets-TS will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Squad5 Jan 2032
David Tsallagov 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.
Squad5 Jan 2032
“The easiest signature of my career.” Dmitry Khraptsov and Uralets-TS agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Match3 Jan 2032
1‑2 to Krylya Sovetov 2, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
The dugout5 Jan 2032
The manager makes an example of Maxim Sofin
“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.
Market5 Jan 2032
“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.
The dugout5 Jan 2032
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 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Interim Coach to a room that had heard them before.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match8 Nov 2031
Dinamo Barnaul will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Uralets-TS were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Player ratings10 Nov 2031
Two goals and a mark of 8.28 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Market10 Nov 2031
Romelu Chadli hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Uralets-TS can pretend not to have heard.
Squad10 Nov 2031
David Tsallagov 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.
Player ratings10 Nov 2031
A performance of 8.27 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad10 Nov 2031
Mathis Loudière 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.
Market10 Nov 2031
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Uralets-TS, another week without a signature from Arsen Siukaev.
Squad10 Nov 2031
6 new faces, and Uralets-TS 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 dugout10 Nov 2031
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Interim Coach on a 3‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.