Marked for Askhat Beysebekov
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad28 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 Akzhaiyk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Yeldos Postnikov 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
5 new faces, and Akzhaiyk 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 2026
Akzhaiyk say no — this time
The offer from Shakhter for Askhat Beysebekov was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Akzhaiyk can pretend not to have heard.
Squad7 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 Akzhaiyk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market10 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market10 Aug 2026
Add another name to the list: Okzhetpes have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Dauren Akhmetov. The answer from Akzhaiyk has not changed — yet.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Nurali Dosmagambetov and Akzhaiyk agree another 2 years.
Squad10 Aug 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 Akzhaiyk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Rahim Alboughobaish 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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Dauren Akhmetov, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Two goals and a mark of 9.00 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Market3 Aug 2026
Nasaf come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Akzhaiyk did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 23. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad3 Aug 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 Akzhaiyk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match1 Aug 2026
Three points for Akzhaiyk, 3‑2 the final word against Shakhter in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Akzhaiyk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rahim Alboughobaish 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 terraces3 Aug 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Rinat Baizhanov 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.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Ninety minutes of Yeldos Postnikov at his very best
Marked 8.00. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Akzhaiyk.
Squad3 Aug 2026
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Akzhaiyk know it, and so does everybody who watches him.