Marked for Sandro Tsitaishvili
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad9 Nov 2026
Evgeniy Elezarenko 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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Molemo Seemela 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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
“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; Osipovichi are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
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 Osipovichi this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Osipovichi training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Molemo Seemela 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Too much change too quickly at Osipovichi
11 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad14 Sep 2026
Oleg Tyulkov 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 Osipovichi this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Molemo Seemela 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
The manager makes an example of Maxim Samartsev
“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.
Loan watch14 Sep 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 Osipovichi, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
Market14 Sep 2026
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Market14 Sep 2026
Osipovichi bring in an old head
Sandro Tsitaishvili is 34 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad7 Sep 2026
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 39 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 29. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market7 Sep 2026
“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 Saburtalo, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad7 Sep 2026
30 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Bachana Chakvetadze 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.
Match5 Sep 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Guram Daraselia. 2‑0 against Sioni, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Guram Daraselia was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.66. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Mamuka Kakabadze
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Mamuka Kakabadze has come out of that comparison in the side, and Saburtalo have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Market7 Sep 2026
Contract settled, hands shaken, no fee changing hands. Sandro Tsitaishvili leaves Saburtalo the quiet way, and the wage bill breathes a little easier.