Marked for Eduards Dubra
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Dec 2026
Arturs Bulvitis damages knee ligaments — 113 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 113 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.
Squad21 Dec 2026
A fracture rules Eduards Dubra out for 14 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Ventspils will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Kristaps Kamess has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Ventspils 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
Steady
Squad14 Dec 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Arturs Bulvitis
121 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Ventspils lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Eduards Dubra breaks a bone — 22 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 22 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Aquiles Ocanto 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad16 Nov 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ventspils this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad16 Nov 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Vladimirs Fertovs and Ventspils agree another 4 years.
Loan watch16 Nov 2026
“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 Ventspils, and 0 appearances in 14 say he has earned the hearing.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Loan watch19 Oct 2026
“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 Ventspils, and 0 appearances in 10 say he has earned the hearing.
Squad19 Oct 2026
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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
The penny has dropped for Deyair Reyes
He looks like a man who lives here now rather than one who is working here. It took most of a season, and at Ventspils the difference is visible from the back of the stand.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ventspils this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Aquiles Ocanto 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 watch21 Sep 2026
“I watch every Ventspils game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Liepaja runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market31 Aug 2026
“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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liepaja this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Aug 2026
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match12 Aug 2026
Liepaja bow out of the cup
Metta/LU go through and Liepaja go home, 0‑0 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Squad17 Aug 2026
1 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Amar Haïdara has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Market17 Aug 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Liepaja is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad17 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liepaja this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Ingars Pūlis
“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.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Twelve yards, a goalkeeper guessing, and it still did not go in. He will take the next one, and every soul in the ground will hold their breath.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Marvin Martins has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Liepaja 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.