Marked for Fedor Pavlenko
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market2 Jul 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 The request is on a desk at Nart, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market2 Jul 2029
Add another name to the list: Cherepovets have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Kirill Larionov. The answer from Nart has not changed — yet.
Squad2 Jul 2029
Tempers go at Nart
Alexandr Olenev 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 Jul 2029
“The easiest signature of my career.” Dmitry Pereverzev and Nart agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad2 Jul 2029
Daichi Hayashi 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.
Boardroom2 Jul 2029
Intake day at the Nart academy
4 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market17 Jul 2028
Gazelle come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Galactik did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad17 Jul 2028
16 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad17 Jul 2028
Words at Galactik training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hillary Wandera 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.
Squad17 Jul 2028
When it matters, Akam Moses plays
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Squad17 Jul 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.
Market17 Jul 2028
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Youssouf Abdraman’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad19 Jun 2028
Yannick Masra 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.
Squad19 Jun 2028
When it matters, Akam Moses plays
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Squad19 Jun 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Eshonxon Jahbarov, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market12 Jun 2028
Galactik say no — this time
The offer from AS DGSSIE for Eshonxon Jahbarov 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.
Squad12 Jun 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 Galactik this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Hillary Wandera 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad17 Apr 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 Galactik this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Apr 2028
The manager makes an example of Hillary Wandera
“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 Apr 2028
Akam Moses has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Galactik will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.