Marked for Édouard Lambert
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match8 May 2027
12 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.
Match10 May 2027
Every point is an argument now for Sillamae Kalev
Position 10 and 3 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Market10 May 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Player ratings10 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad10 May 2027
Oscar Ruiz 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.
Squad10 May 2027
Words at Sillamae Kalev training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Édouard Lambert 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.
Match8 May 2027
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Squad10 May 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Daniil Pareiko, and the manager let it.
Squad10 May 2027
A Sillamae Kalev teenager takes the young player award
Konstantin Kallaste is 18, and for one weekend he was the best of everybody his age in the division. Nobody should build a career on it and everybody quietly does.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings5 Apr 2027
Successful dribbles: 35. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match31 Mar 2027
1‑2 against Tammeka, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Squad5 Apr 2027
A fracture rules Sergei Puri out for 25 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sillamae Kalev will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Liliu Puri: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sillamae Kalev have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market5 Apr 2027
“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 Sillamae Kalev, and it is not being withdrawn.
Match3 Apr 2027
The run now stands at 7, and the questions being asked around Sillamae Kalev are no longer polite ones.
Match3 Apr 2027
5 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Words at Sillamae Kalev training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gerrit Gohlke 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.
Squad5 Apr 2027
“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 Sillamae Kalev know it.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad25 Jan 2027
A fracture rules Karol Kruglov out for 21 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sillamae Kalev will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market25 Jan 2027
Erik Tamm puts it in writing
“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 Sillamae Kalev, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Dylan Sandoval 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market11 Jan 2027
Levadia come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Sillamae Kalev did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Dylan Sandoval 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 Jan 2027
“The easiest signature of my career.” Édouard Lambert and Sillamae Kalev agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Words at Sillamae Kalev training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gerrit Gohlke 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.
Squad11 Jan 2027
The manager makes an example of Gerrit Gohlke
“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.
Market11 Jan 2027
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Sillamae Kalev has been clear about where Konstantin Kallaste stands, which is more than many ever get.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Chamois Niortais can pretend not to have heard.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Hervé Sanchez 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Daouda Guindo 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Pierre Arnaud is the division's best young player this month
At 20 he has spent a month being better than everybody his age in the league, which is a different and harder thing than one good afternoon. Chamois Niortais will try very hard not to make too much of it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Christophe Prévost
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Christophe Prévost has come out of that comparison in the side, and Chamois Niortais have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Market7 Sep 2026
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Pierre Arnaud’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.