Marked for Ivan Andrakhovich
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad30 Jul 2029
Ilja Berkovskiy damages knee ligaments — 97 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 97 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.
Market30 Jul 2029
“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.
Squad30 Jul 2029
Kirill Gotsuk 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 Jul 2029
Words at Torpedo Moscow training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alexandr Yushin 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.
Squad30 Jul 2029
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Dmitry Tsypchenko, and the manager let it.
Player ratings30 Jul 2029
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.72 on the card, and the Torpedo Moscow support went home talking about one name.
Match28 Jul 2029
It needed Alexey Kashtanov to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Chaika, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Market30 Jul 2029
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Torpedo Moscow know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Market30 Jul 2029
Torpedo Moscow have made Yegor Sysoev available for transfer. A career at this club is over in all but paperwork.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad2 Jul 2029
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ilja Berkovskiy
128 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Torpedo Moscow lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad2 Jul 2029
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Kirill Gotsuk and Torpedo Moscow agree another 2 years.
Squad2 Jul 2029
Kirill Gotsuk 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.
Boardroom2 Jul 2029
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Yefim Kolobov has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Torpedo Moscow have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Boardroom2 Jul 2029
Torpedo Moscow sign 5 boys into the academy
None of them will be seen by anybody outside the training ground for three years, most of them will never play a senior match, and one of them might change the club. That is the whole proposition, and it is why academies exist.
Squad2 Jul 2029
“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 Moscow, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Market2 Jul 2029
Nobody sells a season ticket on a signing like this. Every manager who has been through a bad October wants one anyway, and Torpedo Moscow have gone and got theirs early.
Market2 Jul 2029
It is the least glamorous business a club does and the reason seasons do not collapse in February. Alexandr Chernyshov is here for the weeks when three men are injured and somebody still has to play.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match26 Mar 2029
Position 14, 23 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Squad26 Mar 2029
36 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. SKA Khabarovsk 2 lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market26 Mar 2029
“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 SKA Khabarovsk 2, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad26 Mar 2029
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad26 Mar 2029
Cristian Lo Conte 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.
Squad26 Mar 2029
Mate Gulacsi gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Mate Gulacsi has just signed for SKA Khabarovsk 2, and for once the answer mattered.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad12 Mar 2029
50 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. SKA Khabarovsk 2 lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market12 Mar 2029
“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.
Squad12 Mar 2029
Cristian Lo Conte 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.
Squad12 Mar 2029
Ruslan Kazakov 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.
Squad12 Mar 2029
19 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Market12 Mar 2029
The Maxim Ulezko talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. SKA Khabarovsk 2 know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
From our football correspondent
Steady
The terraces30 Oct 2028
The mood at SKA Khabarovsk 2 has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Player ratings30 Oct 2028
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.55, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings30 Oct 2028
A defender's goal wins it for SKA Khabarovsk 2 — 7.69
1 for Ruslan Kazakov, marked 7.69, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Squad30 Oct 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” SKA Khabarovsk 2 may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad30 Oct 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SKA Khabarovsk 2 this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The terraces30 Oct 2028
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad30 Oct 2028
The manager makes an example of Demjan Iljev
“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.
Market30 Oct 2028
Sergei Kolmakov is 18, and SKA Khabarovsk 2 have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces2 Oct 2028
The mood at SKA Khabarovsk 2 has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Squad2 Oct 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” SKA Khabarovsk 2 may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Match30 Sep 2028
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around SKA Khabarovsk 2 are no longer polite ones.
Squad2 Oct 2028
Mahamat Djimet 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.
Match30 Sep 2028
1‑3 to Dinamo Bryansk, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad2 Oct 2028
“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.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
There was no pressure on him and nowhere he had to be. SKA Khabarovsk 2 lost a goal to a decision that took half a second and will be discussed all week.
Squad2 Oct 2028
Demjan Iljev dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
Marked 5.15, and generously at that. Nothing came off, and by the end the crowd had stopped expecting it to.