25 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Moisés 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.
It finished 1‑0, and it was Saeed Obaid’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to CSKA Moscow.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Words at CSKA Moscow training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Matheus Reis 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.
In brief
Player ratingsA defender's afternoon for Ivan Oblyakov
SquadKirill Glebov is the division's best young player this month
SquadGetting past Maxim Borisko has become the hardest job in the division
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. CSKA Moscow scored in the 94th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Ivan Oblyakov 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.
10 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at CSKA Moscow training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Moisés 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 11 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of 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 CSKA Moscow can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” CSKA Moscow have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Matvey Kislyak, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.60
A mark of 7.60 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSKA Moscow this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 20 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
A 1‑0 win over Nizhniy Novgorod, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Matheus Alves is the division's best young player this month
At 21 he has spent a month being better than everybody his age in the league, which is a different and harder thing than one good afternoon. CSKA Moscow will try very hard not to make too much of it.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Vladislav Torop and CSKA Moscow agree another 5 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Maxim Khokhlov is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Ivan Oblyakov 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.
21 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Moisés 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.
Involvement in 2 goals, from a player who spent the ninety minutes doing the thing a manager actually wants: being where the ball was going to end up. 7.72 beside his name.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Matheus Reis wants continental football; whether CSKA Moscow can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
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.
18 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Igor Akinfeev 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.
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad21 Sep 2026
10 new faces, and CSKA Moscow 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at CSKA Moscow training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Maxim Khokhlov 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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Rostov? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
The words a physio says slowly. 19 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Match12 Sep 2026
Fedor Smolov wins it after the whistle should have gone
96 minutes played. Fedor Smolov found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Baltika went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Saeed Obaid 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at CSKA Moscow training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Moisés 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.
At 19 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.
He is going to CSKA Moscow, the club has $11.3M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
“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 Al Shabab, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Mahmoud Al Bloushi has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Al Ahli made Al Shabab work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Al Shabab training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Faisal Al Naqbi 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shabab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
27 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CSKA Moscow lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. CSKA Moscow have paid $11.3M for Saeed Obaid, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Matvey Kislyak 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 terraces7 Sep 2026
CSKA Moscow spend $11.3M on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $11.3M for Saeed Obaid, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
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.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Saeed Obaid reports back to Al Shabab with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
The name of Faisal Al Naqbi has come up in conversations Al Shabab were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shabab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Al Shabab heard it as anything else.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Words at Al Shabab training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ismail Al Hashmi 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.
In brief
SquadDiego Méndez asks for a word with the manager
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Al Shabab hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Diego Méndez 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.
Add another name to the list: Sharjah have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Amer Al Kamali. The answer from Al Shabab has not changed — yet.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Diego Méndez trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.