Marked for Vikintas Simkus
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces28 Aug 2028
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 7 of the 25 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
Squad28 Aug 2028
Diego Pascutini 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.
Squad28 Aug 2028
Tempers go at Lida
Igor Tymonyuk 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.
Squad28 Aug 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.
Match26 Aug 2028
Lida come up short against Neman
Neman left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad28 Aug 2028
Vyacheslav Purak has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Lida 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom7 Feb 2028
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Match7 Feb 2028
Every point is an argument now for Lida
Position 11 and 22 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.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 52 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market7 Feb 2028
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Lida can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom7 Feb 2028
The Lida board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Squad7 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 Lida this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Christian Franco has just signed for Lida, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Words at Lida training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Diego Pascutini 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.
Market7 Feb 2028
He is 19, and the scouting reports agree on the only line that matters: the ceiling. Signings like this are lottery tickets written by professionals.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad10 Jan 2028
A fracture rules Alexandr Krotov out for 81 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Lida will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match10 Jan 2028
Every point is an argument now for Lida
Position 11 and 22 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.
Market10 Jan 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 Lida, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad10 Jan 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 Lida this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Jan 2028
A move Evgeniy Patyutko would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Evgeniy Patyutko is living that version at Lida, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad10 Jan 2028
Words at Lida training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Diego Pascutini 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
Squad16 Aug 2027
Vikintas Slavickas damages knee ligaments — 101 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 101 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.
Market16 Aug 2027
“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 Siauliai, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Daniel Marín 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.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Ignas Klimavicius 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.
Loan watch16 Aug 2027
“I did not go to Suduva to sit and watch. I want to come back to Siauliai and fight for my place.” 3 appearances in 29 matches say the rest.
Squad16 Aug 2027
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.