Marked for Abdullahi Okoye
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad16 Nov 2026
54 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Sillamae Kalev lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad16 Nov 2026
40 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Frank Ainsalu 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Oct 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mihkel Baranov
83 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sillamae Kalev lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Mihkel Baranov 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.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Nikita Ainsalu
“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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market21 Sep 2026
“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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Frank Ainsalu 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.
Loan watch21 Sep 2026
“I watch every Sillamae Kalev game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at FCI Tallinn runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Sillamae Kalev training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Karol Ainsalu 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.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Sander Sappinen is on it.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $27.0K — a club that wants Fjodor Jekimov enough to be asked twice.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
$280.0K on the table at Tammeka. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Ruslan Teverov 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.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The offer went to Tammeka this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Nomme Kalju wanted more than $26.0K and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Narva Trans have kept their man, and FCI Tallinn go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Market17 Aug 2026
He is doing his job and he is not settling. FCI Tallinn were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. FCI Tallinn will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Squad17 Aug 2026
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at FCI Tallinn would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market10 Aug 2026
Nomme Kalju 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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Rauno Baranov commits to Sillamae Kalev for another 4 years.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Frank Ainsalu 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 Aug 2026
Rauno Baranov 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.
Market10 Aug 2026
Add another name to the list: Tulevik have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Taijo Klavan. The answer from Sillamae Kalev has not changed — yet.
The dugout10 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Frank Ainsalu
“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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Aug 2026
A move Artur Malievskiy would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Artur Malievskiy is living that version at FCI Tallinn, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at FCI Tallinn training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ruslan Teverov 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
He is doing things every Saturday that nobody around him can answer. It is flattering for a season and a problem after that, and FCI Tallinn know which stage they are at.
Market3 Aug 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.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
A loan move for Idalécio Dias is in the works
FCI Tallinn have made the call to Nomme Kalju. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
A loan enquiry to Tammeka: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
A loan enquiry to Sillamae Kalev: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
Market3 Aug 2026
Kirill Chernyak is 19, and FCI Tallinn have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Squad3 Aug 2026
5 new faces, and FCI Tallinn are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.