Marked for Aleksandrs Dubra
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad28 Dec 2026
71 days out for Kristaps Cauna after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Spartaks will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Aleksandrs Dubra is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words exchanged at Spartaks
Alexei Savinov 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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Spartaks training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marcis Fertovs 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 dugout28 Dec 2026
Vitalijs Tarasovs has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Spartaks will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Market28 Dec 2026
Experience through the door at Spartaks
Samir Memišević arrives at 33 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad30 Nov 2026
Kristaps Cauna breaks a bone — 100 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 100 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words exchanged at Spartaks
Alexei Savinov 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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Aleksandrs Dubra is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
The manager makes an example of Marcis Fertovs
“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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Spartaks training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Vitalijs Ciganovs 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 dugout30 Nov 2026
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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market19 Oct 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 Spartaks, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Aleksandrs Dubra is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad19 Oct 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 Spartaks this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Vitalijs Ciganovs 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.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
Vitalijs Fertovs has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Spartaks will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
“Judge me on him.” Managers do not say that kind of thing by accident — it moves the pressure from Vladimirs Ikaunieks’s shoulders onto his own, and both of them know it.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Sep 2026
34 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Spartaks lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Market21 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 Spartaks, and it is not being withdrawn.
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 Spartaks this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.