Tom Teillol, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.94
A mark of 7.94 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.
Successful dribbles: 24. 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.
10 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Franciszek Antkiewicz 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.
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.
At 23 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.
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Kuban Holding this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
This is money that keeps the lights on rather than money that buys a centre-half, and the difference is the whole story. A club funded by its owner rather than by its football has exactly one conversation left ahead of it.
Squad6 Dec 2027
Words at Kuban Holding training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dmitry Solovjov 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.
“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.
The dugout6 Dec 2027
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 Vlad Isayev to a room that had heard them before.
The dugout6 Dec 2027
Somebody else is better right now than Artem Smoroda
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
Successful dribbles: 12. 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 9 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
The first defeat in 8 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Spartak Nalchik; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
Aslan Dashaev 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 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.
Boardroom1 Nov 2027
181% of the income goes out in wages at Kuban Holding
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.
100 games in these colours. Service of that kind gets rarer every season, and the crowd knows it.
The dugout1 Nov 2027
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 Vlad Isayev to a room that had heard them before.
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Vadim Shilov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
Nobody at Kuban Holding 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Kuban Holding, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Kuban Holding. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
4 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Kuban Holding could ask drops and the wages Yegor Dorofeev can ask rise.
In brief
SquadQuestions about Yegor Skichko on the training pitch
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Vlad Isayev has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Kuban Holding this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 May 2027
Words at Kuban Holding training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nikita Plotnikov 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.
Level with 92 minutes on the clock, after an afternoon Kuban Holding had all but put away. Sochi 2 will call it a point earned; the home dressing room will call it two given away, and both of them are right.
Successful dribbles: 16. 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.
Something was said to Yegor Skichko and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Kuban Holding can pretend not to have heard.
0 on the scoresheet on his first appearance and a mark of 7.23 beside it. Most debuts are got through; this one was enjoyed, by him and by everybody watching it.
Player ratings19 Apr 2027
Vadim Shilov, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.23
A mark of 8.23 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.
9 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Sevastopol were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Kuban Holding this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Vadim Shilov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Boardroom19 Apr 2027
252% of the income goes out in wages at Kuban Holding
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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Nikita Plotnikov has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Vadim Lazarev 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.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Vadim Shilov 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.
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.
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.