A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. SKA Khabarovsk will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
“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 The request is on a desk at SKA Khabarovsk, and it is not being withdrawn.
Everything agreed with Lokomotiv Moscow, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.94 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
$1.2M on the table at Dinamo Moscow. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
SKA Khabarovsk have gone to Akhmat Grozny with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what SKA Khabarovsk can pretend not to have heard.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Vladislav Kostin was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Successful dribbles: 15. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“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.
The dugout24 Jan 2033
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Interim Coach was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the SKA Khabarovsk dressing room was either.
“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 The request is on a desk at SKA Khabarovsk, and it is not being withdrawn.
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around SKA Khabarovsk are no longer polite ones.
Player ratings4 Oct 2032
Up for the corner, and Émile Marty delivers — 6.99
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Émile Marty scored, was marked 6.99, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Ilja Rubtsov and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
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.
108 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. SKA Khabarovsk lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what SKA Khabarovsk can pretend not to have heard.
$180.0K on the table at Akron. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SKA Khabarovsk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about SKA Khabarovsk and Shinnik in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad26 Jul 2032
Words at SKA Khabarovsk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Valentin Guillaume 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Lev Alim will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around SKA Khabarovsk the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Vladimir Dziov and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad12 May 2031
Words at SKA Khabarovsk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Valentin Guillaume 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 borrowing is past what the bank agreed, which is the line where a debt stops being how football is financed and starts being a problem. Every phone-in in this town will quote the figure for the next five years.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. SKA Khabarovsk know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Yelisey Krivokhizhin trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” SKA Khabarovsk have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Yegor Nazarenko 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 Apr 2031
Words at SKA Khabarovsk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Valentin Guillaume 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 manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at SKA Khabarovsk, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nobody at SKA Khabarovsk will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at SKA Khabarovsk. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.