It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Volna Pinsk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Volna Pinsk, and both men came out saying it was fine.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Stanislav Baluk signs something — a contract at Volna Pinsk or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
1 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Volna Pinsk could ask drops and the wages Timofey Khomanko can ask rise.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Volna Pinsk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dmitriy Fedortsov trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Volna Pinsk will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Volna Pinsk would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Volna Pinsk will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Squad11 Oct 2027
Words at Volna Pinsk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pavel Vakulich 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.
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.
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Alexandr Kuradovets may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
Stanislav Baluk, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.72
A mark of 7.72 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Volna Pinsk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Volna Pinsk are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Volna Pinsk told Ruslan Suanov something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Dmitriy Matyash 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.
At 19 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Vladislav Myzgin. 1‑0 against Uni-X Labs, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pavel Vakulich was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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 players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Ivan Korzun could afford to be generous.
Ivan Yakovlev 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.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Volna Pinsk are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Volna Pinsk have made the call to Torpedo-BelAZ. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
1 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Volna Pinsk could ask drops and the wages Dmitriy Lesnyak can ask rise.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Anton Susha will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Volna Pinsk the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Ivan Yakovlev 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.
1 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Volna Pinsk could ask drops and the wages Anton Susha can ask rise.
A new face in his position, and Kirill Polkhovskiy suddenly has to win back what he thought he owned. Volna Pinsk have promised nothing — clubs rarely do at this stage.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Volna Pinsk they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Vitaliy Kibuk 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.
15 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Volna Pinsk, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Volna Pinsk is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 7 of the 24 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Stanislav Letsko has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 14 combined actions and a mark of 6.45, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
$56.0K was the most the club would pay and Dinamo Brest were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.