The AZAL Courier
Squad24 Aug 2026
47 days out for Maksim Jafarov after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. AZAL will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Market24 Aug 2026
Sumgayit come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and AZAL did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market24 Aug 2026
Renat Ramazanov asks to leave AZAL
“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.
Transfer targets24 Aug 2026
Ruan Índio turns down AZAL
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Cruzeiro keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Nobody could get near Andriy Shtogrin
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad24 Aug 2026
A falling-out at AZAL
Kamran Abdullayev and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match22 Aug 2026
A bad afternoon for AZAL against Zira
1‑3 to Zira, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Transfer targets24 Aug 2026
APOEL tell AZAL: Sunusi Ibrahim is not for sale
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Qara Ramazanov 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.
In brief
- The dugout Rashad Nazarov faces the questions
- Transfer targets A loan move for Chriso is in the works
- The dugout Ruslan Sheydaev dropped after a run of poor form