The first defeat in 9 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Torpedo Kutaisi; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
David Matei and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad26 Apr 2027
Dário Júnior 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.
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout26 Apr 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Revaz Kakabadze to a room that had heard them before.
Nobody at Tskhinvali 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Archil Lobjanidze’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Tskhinvali needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Dila arrived with $220.0K and left with the best player in the building. The board will call it business; the queue at the ticket office will use other words.
Otar Kvilitaia has gone, the accounts have $220.0K in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Boardroom1 Feb 2027
Deadline passes with 3 signed and 3 gone
That is the business done at Tskhinvali until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
The deal with Botafogo is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Tskhinvali know it.
The terraces1 Feb 2027
Tskhinvali spend $210.0K on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $210.0K for Lasha Ozbetelashvili, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Lokomotivi have accepted the money. What Tskhinvali do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
The offer from Merani for Lasha Lobjanidze 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dário Júnior was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Tskhinvali asked and Dila said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
At 35, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
8 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
A loan enquiry to Dinamo Tbilisi: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
Position 2, 22 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Vakhtang Shengelia 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pedro Romano was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Guram Kvilitaia is on it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Tskhinvali, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Tskhinvali know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dário Júnior was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tskhinvali this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Done, and with games to spare. Next season has floodlit nights against clubs from other countries in it, and the accounts have a line they did not have last year.
Position 2, 22 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Tskhinvali can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dário Júnior was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Filipe Cirne 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Lasha Mchedlidze is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Sapovnela will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Sapovnela. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Dário Júnior 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.
Vakhtang Shengelia and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Tskhinvali, and 1 appearances in 10 say he has earned the hearing.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Nobody at Tskhinvali 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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Tskhinvali would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Tskhinvali, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The message was aimed at the stands as much as the dressing room: Guram Kvilitaia plays, and the argument is closed until the manager decides otherwise.
At 35, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Dário Júnior 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.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Tskhinvali, and 2 appearances in 6 say he has earned the hearing.
Squad12 Oct 2026
5 new faces, and Tskhinvali are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Nika Tsitaishvili has his answer from Tskhinvali; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Nobody at Tskhinvali 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Nika Tsitaishvili trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
Sandro Kakabadze arrives at 35 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Sapovnela had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Tskhinvali, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
0‑1 to Saburtalo, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad31 Aug 2026
14 new faces, and Sapovnela are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Sapovnela would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 23 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Sandro Shugladze commits to Sapovnela for another 1 years.
Match1 Aug 2026
Nobody could stop scoring
9 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Sapovnela and Sioni in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Boardroom3 Aug 2026
Nobody left the Sapovnela 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.
11 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Vakhtang Shengelia 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.
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 16 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
The name of Archil Lobjanidze has come up in conversations Tskhinvali were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Criciuma have kept their man, and Tskhinvali go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.