Marked for Maksym Stepanenko
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad4 Jan 2027
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Dynamo Kyiv lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 29. 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.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
Shola Ogundana, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.27
A mark of 8.27 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.
Match2 Jan 2027
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 10 matches without defeat is a foundation Dynamo Kyiv did not have in the autumn.
Squad4 Jan 2027
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Dynamo Kyiv will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Squad4 Jan 2027
A career in one shirt: Denys Popov
11 seasons and 108 appearances, all of them here. Careers like this are not designed; they happen to a certain kind of man at a certain kind of club, and this town has one.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Luka Jović is in the form of his life
A season average of 7.39 with 16 goals behind it. Opponents have started planning around him, which is the sincerest compliment football pays.
The dugout4 Jan 2027
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Dynamo Kyiv have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market4 Jan 2027
Trapani come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Dynamo Kyiv did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match21 Nov 2026
4‑1, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Match23 Nov 2026
Dynamo Kyiv refuse to drop out of the race
Position 2, 41 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.49, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Nazar Voloshyn and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Luka Jović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The terraces23 Nov 2026
At 18 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.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Volodymyr Brazhko was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.16. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad23 Nov 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Maksym Stepanenko and Dynamo Kyiv agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Pavlo Karavayev on a 4‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match8 Aug 2026
4‑0, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.78, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Shola Ogundana, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.67
A mark of 7.67 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.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Up for the corner, and Volodymyr Brazhko delivers — 7.93
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Volodymyr Brazhko scored, was marked 7.93, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
$670.0K on the table at LNZ. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Oleksandr Pikhalionok and Dynamo Kyiv agree another 4 years.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Oleksandr Pikhalionok and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Slavia Prague have kept their man, and Dynamo Kyiv go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The terraces10 Aug 2026
At 20 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.