Vladislav Kamilov 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Georgy Gongadze was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Mikhail Yakovlev’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Ufa needing him to play as if none of it matters.
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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Ufa would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
The instruction came from the boardroom and the dugout did not agree with it. Somebody will go, the fee will be called good business, and the manager will spend the season rebuilding around the space.
Vlad Chkalov 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 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.
200 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Salvatore Borriello has his answer from Chaika; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Chaika, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Every run ends on an afternoon somebody had marked down as routine. This one went 9 matches, which is long enough that a town had stopped counting, and short enough that it will remember exactly who stopped it.
Vlad Chkalov 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dmitry Ivannikov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
100 times in these colours, in all weathers and under four or five different managers. That kind of service is quietly disappearing from the game.
The dugout28 Oct 2030
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Interim Coach to a room that had heard them before.
Nobody has barred the club from spending; it simply has nothing to spend that it has not first raised. Every incoming name comes with an outgoing one attached.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dmitry Ivannikov trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Chaika can pretend not to have heard.
Daniil Stolyarov 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 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Chaika can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
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.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Chaika will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Ufa is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Ufa can pretend not to have heard.
Mikhail Yakovlev 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 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Radzhab Gusengadjiev trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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.
Vlad Chkalov 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dmitry Ivannikov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Successful dribbles: 19. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Chaika, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The club looked outside for a month, found nothing it preferred, and handed the job to the man who had been doing it anyway. He knows the building; now he has to prove he knows the rest.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Chaika people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Chaika had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at CSKA Moscow, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chaika this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 14 combined actions and a mark of 6.69, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Torpedo Moscow have kept their man, and Chaika go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Arseny Avvakumov has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Tommy Clayton has just signed for Chaika, and for once the answer mattered.
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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Chaika can pretend not to have heard.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Akron is saying, and nobody at Chaika is enjoying the guessing.
Everything agreed with Dinamo Moscow, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chaika this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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 Chaika know it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dmitry Ivannikov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Dinamo Moscow have kept their man, and Chaika go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
$1.5M is a serious amount of money and it does not play centre-forward. Everybody in the dressing room knows who used to be looked at when it went wrong.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Alania waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Chaika is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
There is nobody left to promote and nobody left to run a session. The board have brought in a name the supporters do not know, and the question of how a club gets here will outlast whoever answers it.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Chaika have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“I am not thinking past Saturday, and I would advise nobody else to.” The caretaker’s first rule is to pretend the job is small; Interim Coach recited it perfectly.
He is going to Dinamo Moscow, the club has $1.5M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Everything agreed with Torpedo Moscow, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Chaika will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Ryazan waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Chaika is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Nikolay Ischenko 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.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Yegor Sidorov has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Chaika have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
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.
Dinamo Makhachkala have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
The manager has a list and the board has a condition attached to it. That is not a crisis — half of football works this way — but it decides which of the two of them gets his way in August.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Chaika know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Chaika will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 Chaika, and it is not being withdrawn.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Chaika have done the hard part with Ufa, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Dmitry Ivannikov 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.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Nikolay Aslanyan has, at Chaika, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Daniil Stolyarov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ufa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
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.
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.
Mikhail Yakovlev 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.
Squad29 Apr 2030
Anton Roschin 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Daniil Kashmin trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“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 Ufa, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ufa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Georgy Gongadze was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Jack Allan has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
“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.
The dugout1 Apr 2030
Vlad Chkalov is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Ufa have lost him in all but the paperwork.
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Boardroom25 Feb 2030
Ufa close the window on a squad of their own making
0 in and 1 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Anton Roschin was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Vladislav Kamilov 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Georgy Gongadze 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 chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Spartak Kostroma left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout31 Dec 2029
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Pyotr Egorov to a room that had heard them before.
The unglamorous genius of a well-written contract. Dilan Ortíz is somebody else's player now, and $260.0K has arrived because the people who sold him thought further ahead than the transfer window.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Ufa, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ufa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 9 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.07 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ufa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Anton Roschin 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Jack Allan has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Position 10, 25 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Noah Morgan has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
5 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.
Vladislav Kamilov 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.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Rizvan Tashaev, and the manager let it.
The dugout29 Oct 2029
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑2 Pyotr Egorov left the room before anybody could ask which.
The dugout29 Oct 2029
Vlad Chkalov is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Vladislav Kamilov 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 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.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Ufa, another week without a signature from Dickson Ibrahim.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dickson Ibrahim trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nobody at Ufa 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.
3 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Ufa could ask drops and the wages Artem Ivanov can ask rise.
20 graduates, from a department now rated 7 out of 20. Nothing about the academy appears in a result, and nothing about the club’s future exists without it.
In brief
SquadQuestions about Georgy Tuaev on the training pitch
15 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Neftyanik lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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 Neftyanik, and it is not being withdrawn.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Neftyanik will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Sergey Krotov 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Vlad Chkalov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is 19 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
22 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Neftyanik lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Neftyanik scored in the 94th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Valdemar Klitsø scored, was marked 7.59, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Viktor Gusev will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Neftyanik the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.97, and 2 involvements.
Savely Gerasimov 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.
This is not rotation. Viktor Gusev has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Neftyanik is pretending otherwise.
Squad15 Jan 2029
Vlad Chkalov 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.