Marked for Mardani Majid
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market9 Aug 2027
Keflavik come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Sokol did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
The dugout9 Aug 2027
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sokol have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Player ratings9 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 26. 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.
Market9 Aug 2027
“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.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Tempers go at Sokol
Artem Bykov 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.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Words at Sokol training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dmitry Sasin 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.
Match7 Aug 2027
It finished 1‑0, and it was Aleksej Golijanin’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Sokol.
Player ratings9 Aug 2027
11 combined actions and 7.14. 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 ratings9 Aug 2027
Marked 8.11 — 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
Crisis
Market28 Jun 2027
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Chertanovo waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Sokol is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market28 Jun 2027
“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.
Squad28 Jun 2027
The step up is real for Omer Zaguri
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Transfer targets28 Jun 2027
Sokol asked and CSKA Moscow said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad28 Jun 2027
The medical room confirms 23 days on the sidelines for Faris Al-Zubaidi, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Boardroom28 Jun 2027
Belts tighten at Sokol
The accounts are being read more closely than the results. Wages before ambition is the order of business now, and the manager has been told so.
Market28 Jun 2027
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Timur Kraikov signs something — a contract at Sokol or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The dugout28 Jun 2027
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
The dugout28 Jun 2027
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Vladislav Morozov trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces21 Jun 2027
Anger at Sokol spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Match21 Jun 2027
Every point is an argument now for Sokol
Position 17 and 27 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Squad21 Jun 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Vladislav Kostin is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Jun 2027
Words exchanged at Sokol
Artem Bykov 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.
Market21 Jun 2027
Chertanovo are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Sokol will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Market21 Jun 2027
The name of Dmitry Sasin keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Sokol say nothing, which says plenty.
The dugout21 Jun 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.
Boardroom21 Jun 2027
Sokol can sign again
The window is open, and with it the only month of the year when a supporter’s hopes are limited by nothing but arithmetic. The board know the arithmetic; the supporters know the hopes.
The dugout21 Jun 2027
The manager makes Ivan Budachev a promise
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Sokol. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market14 Jun 2027
“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.
Squad14 Jun 2027
Tempers go at Sokol
Artem Bykov 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.
Boardroom14 Jun 2027
105% of the income goes out in wages at Sokol
Every club in football 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 somebody has tried it.
The dugout14 Jun 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.
Market14 Jun 2027
The Artem Bykov talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sokol know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The dugout14 Jun 2027
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Ivan Budachev has written the date down.
Squad14 Jun 2027
A call-up flatters the player and the club that produced him in the same breath. Sokol would like him back in one piece and know they will not be consulted.
Squad14 Jun 2027
A season on the outside for Mardani Majid
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Sokol has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
Market14 Jun 2027
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Mardani Majid may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market3 Aug 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Maluku Utara United can pretend not to have heard.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Igor Inocêncio and Maluku Utara United agree another 3 years.
Match1 Aug 2026
Persija left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Market3 Aug 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Maluku Utara United, another week without a signature from Lucas Cardoso.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Ciro 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.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
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 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Bagas Hardiyanto to a room that had heard them before.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yacob Sayuri was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Mardani Majid, and the manager let it.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Every debut is a small story about the future: Syahrul Ramadhani, 19 years old, off the academy pitches and into the first team. The parents in the stand will keep the programme.