Marked for Orkhan Amirguliyev
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match2 Apr 2029
Every point is an argument now for AZAL
Position 9 and 8 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.
Squad2 Apr 2029
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AZAL this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Apr 2029
Samir Mammadov 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad25 Dec 2028
Tempers go at AZAL
Ruslan Dadashov 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.
Squad25 Dec 2028
Samir Mammadov 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.
Squad25 Dec 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces25 Sep 2028
Anger at AZAL spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Player ratings25 Sep 2028
Successful dribbles: 34. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings25 Sep 2028
Two goals and a mark of 8.39 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Juan Cámara in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AZAL this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Words at AZAL training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Samir Mammadov 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.
Match23 Sep 2028
It finished 2‑1, and it was Bahlul Sadygov’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to AZAL.
Squad25 Sep 2028
The manager makes an example of Samir Jafarov
“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
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; AZAL are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Loan watch25 Sep 2028
“I watch every AZAL game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Neftchi runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad7 Aug 2028
Mahir Guseynov damages knee ligaments — 100 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 100 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.
Market7 Aug 2028
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.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Emin Ozobic is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.