Marked for Vugar Garayev
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad1 Aug 2033
Alexandr Berulava damages knee ligaments — 18 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 18 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.
Market1 Aug 2033
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Slavia Mozyr is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Market1 Aug 2033
The offer from Bumprom Gomel for Vugar Garayev 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.
Squad1 Aug 2033
“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 Slavia Mozyr know it.
Squad1 Aug 2033
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Slavia Mozyr this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market1 Aug 2033
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Slavia Mozyr will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
Match30 Jul 2033
Uni-X Labs made Slavia Mozyr work for it, but the scoreboard read 3‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad1 Aug 2033
Alexey Antilevskiy 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.
Player ratings1 Aug 2033
Marked 8.80 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad25 Jul 2033
Alexandr Berulava damages knee ligaments — 25 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 25 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.
Player ratings25 Jul 2033
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 7.93, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Match23 Jul 2033
4 matches without a win for Slavia Mozyr
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Slavia Mozyr are no longer polite ones.
Match23 Jul 2033
2‑3 to Neman, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad25 Jul 2033
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Slavia Mozyr this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad25 Jul 2033
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Bruno Cabrera, and the manager let it.
Market25 Jul 2033
Add another name to the list: Bumprom Gomel have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Vugar Garayev. The answer from Slavia Mozyr has not changed — yet.
Squad25 Jul 2033
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Player ratings25 Jul 2033
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad11 Apr 2033
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Vugar Garayev: 3 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Match6 Apr 2033
0‑0 against Slonim, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Player ratings11 Apr 2033
Silvio Rizzo, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.60
A mark of 7.60 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Market11 Apr 2033
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Slavia Mozyr they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Player ratings11 Apr 2033
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad11 Apr 2033
Ilja Kalachev 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.
Squad11 Apr 2033
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Alexey Antilevskiy, and the manager let it.
Match9 Apr 2033
0‑1 to Neman, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings11 Apr 2033
19 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad1 Nov 2032
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Slavia Mozyr this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad1 Nov 2032
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.
Squad1 Nov 2032
Words at Slavia Mozyr training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Silvio Rizzo 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad7 Jun 2032
Vugar Garayev decides it from twelve yards
3 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.
Match2 Jun 2032
Naftan are out and Slavia Mozyr go through, 0‑0 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
Market7 Jun 2032
Only the photograph left for Ilya Verenich
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ilya Verenich will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Slavia Mozyr the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad7 Jun 2032
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Slavia Mozyr may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Match2 Jun 2032
7 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.
Squad7 Jun 2032
Pavel Chikida 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.
Player ratings7 Jun 2032
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.
Squad7 Jun 2032
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Alexandr Savitskiy is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Player ratings7 Jun 2032
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.