The AZAL Courier
Match18 Sep 2027
11 matches without a win for AZAL
The run now stands at 11, and the questions being asked around AZAL are no longer polite ones.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Renat Medvedev keeps AZAL in it on his own
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match15 Sep 2027
The small margins put AZAL out
Out, 0‑3 to Kapaz, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
Match18 Sep 2027
Inter punish AZAL for switching off
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Mahir Ramazanov will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at AZAL escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Squad20 Sep 2027
A fracture rules Afonso Machado out for 50 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason AZAL will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The terraces20 Sep 2027
A cup hiding at Kapaz leaves AZAL explaining themselves
0-3, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Joseph de la Cruz arrives at the club he grew up with
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Joseph de la Cruz has, at AZAL, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Player ratings20 Sep 2027
Vintage Rahid Ramazanov — 7.85
At 33 every good afternoon gets called a throwback, and this one was: 7.85, and nobody on the pitch better.
Match18 Sep 2027
No clean sheets in sight for AZAL
6 games now with at least two against. The back line has been rearranged, the goalkeeper has been backed publicly, and the goals keep going in anyway.
In brief
- Player ratings Nobody could get near Zakaria Sawo
- Market Javid Madatov comes home
- Squad Words at AZAL training over how hard people work