Marked for Robert Maillard
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces15 Jan 2029
Anger at Orsha spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Boardroom15 Jan 2029
Pressure builds in the Orsha boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Market15 Jan 2029
“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 The request is on a desk at Orsha, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad15 Jan 2029
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Squad15 Jan 2029
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.
Squad15 Jan 2029
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dmitriy P. Denisenko trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market4 Dec 2028
“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 The request is on a desk at Orsha, and it is not being withdrawn.
Boardroom4 Dec 2028
The owner puts $60.1K into Orsha
This is money that keeps the lights on rather than money that buys a centre-half, and the difference is the whole story. A club funded by its owner rather than by its football has exactly one conversation left ahead of it.
Squad4 Dec 2028
Tempers go at Orsha
Gleb Zheleznikov 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.
Boardroom4 Dec 2028
Orsha cannot sign anybody
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
Market4 Dec 2028
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Orsha, another week without a signature from Dmitriy P. Denisenko.
Squad4 Dec 2028
Words at Orsha training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Edgaras Barauskas 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
Crisis
Market27 Nov 2028
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Orsha can pretend not to have heard.
Squad27 Nov 2028
Robert Maillard gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Robert Maillard has just signed for Orsha, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad27 Nov 2028
Pavel Klenje 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.
Boardroom27 Nov 2028
122% of the income goes out in wages at Orsha
Every club in football 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 somebody has tried it.
Market27 Nov 2028
He is 19, and the scouting reports agree on the only line that matters: the ceiling. Signings like this are lottery tickets written by professionals.
Squad27 Nov 2028
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.