Marked for Daniil Zinchenko
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market15 Feb 2027
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Volgar have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad15 Feb 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 Volgar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Words at Volgar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Vladislav Morozov 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad18 Jan 2027
Mikhail Strelnik: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Volgar have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad18 Jan 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 Volgar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad18 Jan 2027
55 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad10 Aug 2026
Tempers go at Volgar
Vyacheslav Krotov 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.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad10 Aug 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.
Market10 Aug 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Volgar, another week without a signature from Vladislav Yampolskiy.
Market10 Aug 2026
Oliver Thoreson is 20, and Volgar have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Market10 Aug 2026
He is 16, and nobody at Volgar signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Market10 Aug 2026
Daniil Zinchenko is 14, and Volgar have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Squad10 Aug 2026
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.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Marked 7.15 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Volgar had the best player on the pitch.