10 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.
Squad17 May 2027
Dato Bukia 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.
“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.
The dugout17 May 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 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Shota Chakvetadze to a room that had heard them before.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
96 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Tskhinvali lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Chikhura waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Tskhinvali is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Everything agreed with Dinamo Tbilisi, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Shota Tsitaishvili 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 phone has started ringing about Davit Kiteishvili again, and this time the name on the line is Merani. Tskhinvali are listening politely and promising nothing.
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.
Tskhinvali have made the call to Torpedo Kutaisi. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
The words a physio says slowly. 124 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.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Tskhinvali, and it is not being withdrawn.
Dato Janelidze 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.
Shota Tsitaishvili 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 Mikheil Shengelia was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Zurab Kvilitaia trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Tskhinvali. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
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.
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.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Fedot Barkov has written the date down.