Marked for Arseniy Blokhin
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad16 Oct 2028
Words exchanged at Avangard
Danila Knyazev 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 dugout16 Oct 2028
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Boardroom16 Oct 2028
The Avangard debt reaches $5.0M
Football clubs borrow; that is not the story. Borrowing more than the facility allows is, because from here it is the owner's money or somebody else's decision, and neither of those belongs to the board.
Market16 Oct 2028
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
The dugout16 Oct 2028
Yegor Sedov knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Yegor Sedov trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Squad16 Oct 2028
Nicolò Marciano is the weekend's best young player
At 20 he is being measured against the rest of the division's kids and coming out in front. The senior version of this award is where the club would like this to lead.
The dugout16 Oct 2028
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.
Market16 Oct 2028
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Avangard know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Market16 Oct 2028
Avangard have let the market know Matteo Paccari can be had. No price in the advert, but everyone in the trade knows roughly what it says.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom12 Jun 2028
Pressure builds in the Avangard boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Squad12 Jun 2028
The words a physio says slowly. 21 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market12 Jun 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 Avangard, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Yegor Sedov 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.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Jakub Jakimiuk 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.
Boardroom12 Jun 2028
108% of the income goes out in wages at Avangard
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.
Squad12 Jun 2028
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Trezeguet Warda commits to Avangard for another 1 years.
The dugout12 Jun 2028
Danila Knyazev asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Market12 Jun 2028
At 34, he has seen every situation this season can produce, twice. The legs will be managed; the head is the purchase.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad5 Jun 2028
28 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Avangard lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Boardroom5 Jun 2028
Alexey Kozlov has until the next board meeting
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Avangard can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Squad5 Jun 2028
Not a month, not a run of form — a whole season of being the best 21-year-old anybody in this division could put on a pitch. This is the honour that gets mentioned for the rest of his career.
Market5 Jun 2028
Yegor Sedov hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Avangard can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom5 Jun 2028
The Avangard board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Squad5 Jun 2028
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Avangard have had the benefit of it.
Transfer targets5 Jun 2028
Everything agreed with another club, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Squad5 Jun 2028
Words exchanged at Avangard
Davron To'laganov 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.
Boardroom5 Jun 2028
The owner puts $38.2K into Avangard
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.