Marked for Roque Ricca
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad7 Aug 2028
Serhii Kosovskyi damages knee ligaments — 43 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 43 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Roque Ricca: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Livyi Bereh have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market7 Aug 2028
The offer from Kolos for Serhii Kosovskyi 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.
Market7 Aug 2028
“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 The request is on a desk at Livyi Bereh, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad7 Aug 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 Livyi Bereh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Timothy Vanaken is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Match5 Aug 2028
Beaten 0‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Boardroom7 Aug 2028
89% of the income goes out in wages at Livyi Bereh
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.
Player ratings7 Aug 2028
Nobody could get near Diego
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad10 Jul 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Serhii Kosovskyi
72 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Livyi Bereh lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad10 Jul 2028
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Livyi Bereh will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market10 Jul 2028
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market10 Jul 2028
Only the photograph left for Nazar Voloshyn
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Nazar Voloshyn will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Livyi Bereh the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad10 Jul 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 Livyi Bereh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Jul 2028
Words at Livyi Bereh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nazarii Vorobchak 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match24 Jun 2028
No end in sight to Wanderers's wait for a win
6 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Wanderers has to find a result from somewhere.
Market26 Jun 2028
Wanderers say no — this time
The offer from Artigas for Roque Ricca 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.
Squad26 Jun 2028
Jonathan Urretaviscaya 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.
Market26 Jun 2028
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Facundo Labandeira wants continental football; whether Wanderers can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad26 Jun 2028
José Alberti 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.
Market26 Jun 2028
Business is business: Gaizka Gómez goes
Cerro paid $52.0K and Wanderers took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Player ratings26 Jun 2028
Marked 7.67 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Wanderers had the best player on the pitch.
Squad26 Jun 2028
The manager makes an example of Alan García
“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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market27 Dec 2027
Enzo Meirelles has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Wanderers they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market27 Dec 2027
Wanderers say no — this time
The offer from Artigas for Roque Ricca 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.
Squad27 Dec 2027
José Alberti 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.
Squad27 Dec 2027
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Facundo Machado trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Squad27 Dec 2027
Nobody at Wanderers 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.
Market27 Dec 2027
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Wanderers will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.