Marked for Eduards Bulvitis
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad11 Oct 2027
Eduards Tarasovs 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.
Loan watch11 Oct 2027
“I watch every Spartaks game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Liepaja runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Squad11 Oct 2027
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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad17 May 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Igors Ciganovs
64 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Spartaks lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings17 May 2027
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.45, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Match17 May 2027
Spartaks up to position 3
13 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Player ratings17 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 26. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match15 May 2027
Jelgava made Spartaks work for it, but the scoreboard read 4‑3 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Match15 May 2027
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Spartaks and Jelgava in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Squad17 May 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Spartaks this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings17 May 2027
A performance of 8.85 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
The terraces17 May 2027
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Eduards Savalnieks 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad22 Mar 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Igors Ciganovs
123 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Spartaks lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 50 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Match20 Mar 2027
No end in sight to Spartaks's wait for a win
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Spartaks has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Jānis Grīnbergs 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.
The terraces22 Mar 2027
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Eduards Tarasovs 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.
Loan watch22 Mar 2027
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Spartaks, and 3 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
Player ratings22 Mar 2027
A mark of 7.09, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Match20 Mar 2027
Ninety minutes, two goalkeepers with clean gloves, and not one finish worth keeping. Liepaja will be the happier side with the point.