Marked for Ehsan Mohammadi
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match12 Oct 2026
8 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Ehsan Mohammadi is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Favio Durán 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Chernomorets training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kirill Suslov 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Zaurbek Pliev
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Match10 Oct 2026
A 1‑1 draw with Yenisey leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market28 Sep 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match26 Sep 2026
No end in sight to Chernomorets's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Chernomorets has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Favio Durán 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 Sep 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Match26 Sep 2026
0‑1 to Ural, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Oleg Nikolaev 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.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Igor Konovalov dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Shots: 5. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad21 Sep 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ilja Zhigulev
16 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Chernomorets lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match19 Sep 2026
6 matches without a win for Chernomorets
The run now stands at 6, and the questions being asked around Chernomorets are no longer polite ones.
Squad21 Sep 2026
A move Ehsan Mohammadi would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Ehsan Mohammadi is living that version at Chernomorets, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Ilja Zhigulev 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Kirill Suslov 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.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Marked 4.72, and generously at that. Nothing came off, and by the end the crowd had stopped expecting it to.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
The chances came and went for Abakar Gadjiev
4 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Market21 Sep 2026
It is the least glamorous business a club does and the reason seasons do not collapse in February. Ehsan Mohammadi is here for the weeks when three men are injured and somebody still has to play.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market31 Aug 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market31 Aug 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Padideh have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Saeid Shojaei 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Saeid Shojaei
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Shots: 4, not one of them in. A centre forward is paid for one thing, and on this evidence he has forgotten which thing it is.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at Padideh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Milad Taremi 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 terraces31 Aug 2026
Everybody has an opinion about Vouria Vafaei
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
The one thing Kaveh Cheshmi could not do
Shots: 4, enough of them from close enough that a striker in form scores two. He is not a striker in form.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
4 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.