“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 The request is on a desk at Lokomotiv Gomel, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lokomotiv Gomel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
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 Nikita Kukhtik has written the date down.
Nikita Kukhtik 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Danil Maltsev 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.
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 Nikita Kukhtik has written the date down.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Lokomotiv Gomel they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Danil Maltsev was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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 Nikita Kukhtik has written the date down.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Maksim Bykau trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Lokomotiv Gomel know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Nikita Kukhtik 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.
“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 Lokomotiv Gomel, and 1 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Danil Maltsev 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.
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 Nikita Kukhtik has written the date down.
A manager forgives a bad Saturday far more readily than a bad Tuesday, because one of them he can explain and the other one he chose. The reports this week have not been good.
Nikita Kukhtik 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Lokomotiv Gomel, another week without a signature from Evgeny Mamonov.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Lokomotiv Gomel, and both men came out saying it was fine.