Marked for Ilja Balyasnikov
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad1 Mar 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Dmitry Prokhorov
22 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rubin 2 lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Alexandr Zotov 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.
Squad1 Mar 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market19 Oct 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 The request is on a desk at Rubin 2, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad19 Oct 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 Rubin 2 this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Marat Apshatsev
“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 ratings19 Oct 2026
Marked 7.32 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Rubin 2 had the best player on the pitch.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Alexandr Zotov 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Ilja Balyasnikov 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.