Volodymyr Rudiuk and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad20 May 2030
Nazar Lys 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.
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.
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.
0‑4 to Poltava, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Podillia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Podillia asked and Kolos said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Andrii Bobynets 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.
Squad28 May 2029
Words at Podillia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Radion Posievkin 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 club is not barred from spending; it simply has nothing to spend that it has not first raised. Every name linked with Podillia this window arrives with a name leaving in the same sentence.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Podillia, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Podillia will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
3 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Podillia could ask drops and the wages Radion Posievkin can ask rise.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Podillia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 May 2029
Words at Podillia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Radion Posievkin 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.
Nobody at Podillia 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Podillia they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Andrii Bobynets 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.
Squad9 Apr 2029
Words at Podillia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Radion Posievkin 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.
Nobody at Podillia 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Volodymyr Rudiuk trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Podillia, another week without a signature from Lorenzo Fontanini.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Podillia are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad2 Apr 2029
Words at Podillia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christopher Drakos 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 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.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ivan Denysov did not need any: 8.80, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“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 Podillia, and it is not being withdrawn.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ivan Denysov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Radion Posievkin. 2‑1 against Livyi Bereh, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“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 Podillia know it.