Marked for Valentyn Malynovskyi
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market25 Mar 2030
Only the photograph left for Petro Stasiuk
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Petro Stasiuk will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bukovyna the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The dugout25 Mar 2030
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad25 Mar 2030
Words at Bukovyna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Danylo Kanevtsev 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 dugout25 Mar 2030
Petro Stasiuk is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
The dugout25 Mar 2030
Oleh Ilin gets picked when it counts
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Oleh Ilin is on it.
The dugout25 Mar 2030
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Bukovyna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market11 Feb 2030
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Metalurh Zaporizhzhia waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Bukovyna is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Transfer targets11 Feb 2030
Everything agreed with Shakhtar, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Boardroom11 Feb 2030
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Petro Stasiuk has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Squad11 Feb 2030
Taras Sakiv in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bukovyna this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad11 Feb 2030
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Valentyn Malynovskyi has just signed for Bukovyna, and for once the answer mattered.
Transfer targets11 Feb 2030
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.
Squad11 Feb 2030
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Player ratings11 Feb 2030
Ninety minutes of Oleh Ilin at his very best
Marked 8.15. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Bukovyna.
Player ratings11 Feb 2030
Taras Sakiv beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 17. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.