The deal with Dinamo Minsk is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Egor Lapun 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 Jan 2029
Sergey Guzyuk 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Evgeniy Karpovich is on it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Baranovichi, and both men came out saying it was fine.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Alexey Polev signs something — a contract at Baranovichi or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Vladislav Karpenya 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.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $7.7M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Baranovichi, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Nazar Kurak is on it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Sergey Guzyuk signs something — a contract at Baranovichi or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Baranovichi can pretend not to have heard.
Egor Lapun 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 Sergey Guzyuk was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $7.6M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Egor Lapun trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Nazar Kurak is on it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Sergey Guzyuk signs something — a contract at Baranovichi or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Baranovichi they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“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 Baranovichi, 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 Baranovichi this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Baranovichi has been clear about where Denis Shpakovskiy stands, which is more than many ever get.
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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Baranovichi, another week without a signature from Egor Lapun.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Timofey Tkachev trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nobody at Baranovichi 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Baranovichi have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Marcel Renaud has just signed for Baranovichi, and for once the answer mattered.
He is doing his job and he is not settling. Baranovichi were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
He is 19, and nobody at Baranovichi signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Squad18 Sep 2028
6 new faces, and Baranovichi 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Kaspars Jagodinskis and Baranovichi agree another 3 years.