Mark Yakovlev

Striker - Zenit
4 Feb 2027
Thursday
Process

Marked for Mark Yakovlev

23 Edition

The Zenit Gazette

4 Jan 2027
From our football correspondent Triumph

Match

Zenit tear Dinamo Makhachkala apart

Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 5‑0 against Dinamo Makhachkala, and it could have been more.

Market

Nino puts it in writing

“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 The request is on a desk at Zenit, and it is not being withdrawn.

Match

Nobody wins at Zenit

16 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.

Player ratings

Sergej Milinković-Savić scores twice — 8.42

Two goals and a mark of 8.42 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.

Squad

A day Robert Renan will not forget

3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.

Boardroom

There is money circling Zenit

Nothing signed, nothing denied, and a lot of people suddenly very careful about their wording. Supporters who have been through one of these know the quiet part lasts months.

Squad

The season belongs to Alex Meret

An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Zenit have had the benefit of it.

Market

Como join the queue for Maxim Glushenkov

Add another name to the list: Como have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Maxim Glushenkov. The answer from Zenit has not changed — yet.

Market

Zalgiris come back empty-handed

The bid was some way short and Zenit did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.

In brief

Back issues
8 Edition

The Zenit Gazette

21 Sep 2026
From our football correspondent Triumph

Match

Sergej Milinković-Savić lights up a European night for Zenit

3‑1 against Vikingur, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Sergej Milinković-Savić was at the centre of the description.

Match

Zenit tear Rostov apart

Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 4‑1 against Rostov, and it could have been more.

Squad

A day Luiz Henrique will not forget

3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.

Market

Mark Yakovlev says no to Astrakhan

“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Mark Yakovlev had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.

Match

Zenit make it 4 in a row

Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Zenit have 4 straight wins of it.

Market

Sergej Milinković-Savić wants European nights

The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.

Player ratings

Luiz Henrique was on a different afternoon to everybody else

9.84. 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.

Squad

Alex Meret falls out with a teammate over standards

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.

Squad

Andrey Mostovoy 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 Zenit this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.

In brief