Marked for Stefan Junuzovic
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Jul 2028
Kirill Dontsov damages knee ligaments — 71 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 71 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.
Market3 Jul 2028
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Metallurg they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market3 Jul 2028
“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.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Ilnur Badrtdinov 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.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Words at Metallurg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nikita Kononenko 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.
Squad3 Jul 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Nikita Kononenko, and the manager let it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Jun 2028
Kirill Dontsov damages knee ligaments — 92 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 92 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.
Market12 Jun 2028
Gadji Budunov hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Metallurg can pretend not to have heard.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Savva Potapov 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.
Squad12 Jun 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Alexandr Kobzev, and the manager let it.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Nikita Kononenko 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.
Boardroom12 Jun 2028
93% of the income goes out in wages at Metallurg
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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market5 Jul 2027
David Junuzovic wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Admira Wacker hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad5 Jul 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Admira Wacker this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Raphael Junuzovic is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Heinz Prass 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.
Squad5 Jul 2027
44 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Market5 Jul 2027
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.