Marked for Mohammed Amara
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match28 Oct 2028
8 matches without a win for Chernihiv
The run now stands at 8, and the questions being asked around Chernihiv are no longer polite ones.
Market30 Oct 2028
Only the photograph left for Mohammed Amara
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mohammed Amara will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Chernihiv the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad30 Oct 2028
Maksym Tatarenko 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.
Boardroom30 Oct 2028
Wages eat 143% of everything Chernihiv earn
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.
Squad30 Oct 2028
Ivan Kotukha 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.
Match28 Oct 2028
It needed Mathías Alessandro to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against UCSA, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Squad30 Oct 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.
Player ratings30 Oct 2028
Successful dribbles: 14. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad30 Oct 2028
Dmytro Fatieiev asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match23 Oct 2028
Every point is an argument now for Chernihiv
Position 15 and 9 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.
Match21 Oct 2028
No end in sight to Chernihiv's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Chernihiv has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad23 Oct 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Chernihiv may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market23 Oct 2028
Monfils Nganga has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Chernihiv they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Boardroom23 Oct 2028
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Mohammed Amara 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.
Squad23 Oct 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 Chernihiv this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad23 Oct 2028
The manager makes an example of Dmytro Fatieiev
“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.
Match21 Oct 2028
0‑1 to Bukovyna, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings23 Oct 2028
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match30 Sep 2028
No end in sight to Chernihiv's wait for a win
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Chernihiv has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad2 Oct 2028
Maksym Tatarenko 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 Oct 2028
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Dmytro Myronenko commits to Chernihiv for another 2 years.
Match30 Sep 2028
1‑2 to Victoriia Sumy, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
A performance of 8.66 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Boardroom2 Oct 2028
Wages eat 131% of everything Chernihiv earn
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.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad2 Oct 2028
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Maksym Tatarenko knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
Squad2 Oct 2028
Words at Chernihiv training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Roman Borysevych 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
Crisis
Match25 Sep 2028
Every point is an argument now for Chernihiv
Position 14 and 7 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.
Market25 Sep 2028
Monfils Nganga has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Chernihiv they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Vitalii Koltsov 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.
Match23 Sep 2028
3 matches without a goal for Chernihiv
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Match23 Sep 2028
Beaten 0‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad25 Sep 2028
“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.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Words at Chernihiv training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ivan Kotukha 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.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Dominik Szalai dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Player ratings25 Sep 2028
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match12 Feb 2028
Nowhere to hide for Chernihiv
0‑3 against Karpaty, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Market14 Feb 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 Chernihiv, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad14 Feb 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 Chernihiv this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Feb 2028
Mohammed Amara gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Mohammed Amara has just signed for Chernihiv, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad14 Feb 2028
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Maksym Tatarenko knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
Squad14 Feb 2028
Rodrigo 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.
Player ratings14 Feb 2028
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Boardroom14 Feb 2028
Nobody left the Chernihiv dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
Player ratings14 Feb 2028
A mark of 5.12 tells the story without any need for embellishment. He will want the tape of this one quietly lost.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad7 Jun 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Philipp Schuck
36 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Red Star lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad7 Jun 2027
A fracture rules Mouez Hassen out for 57 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Red Star will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market7 Jun 2027
Red Star say no — this time
The offer from Monaco for Balthazar Pierret 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 Jun 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Red Star can pretend not to have heard.
Squad7 Jun 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Bendegúz Kovács is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Boardroom7 Jun 2027
The Red Star board want somebody sold
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.