The Rostov Sentinel
Squad30 Apr 2029
Olakunle Olusegun wants to go home
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Rostov can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Squad30 Apr 2029
Anton Zabolotny 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 Rostov this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Loan watch30 Apr 2029
The goals keep arriving from Esequiel Barco’s exile
10 goals in 23 games at Spartak Moscow — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Rostov updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
The dugout30 Apr 2029
When it matters, Ilja Zhbanov plays
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.
The dugout30 Apr 2029
Anton Zabolotny knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Rostov, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Market30 Apr 2029
The Ivan Komarov question follows Rostov around
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Ivan Komarov’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
The dugout30 Apr 2029
Soltmurad Bakaev has been promised minutes
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Soltmurad Bakaev has written the date down.
The dugout30 Apr 2029
The manager plants his flag on Maxim Radchenko
“Judge me on him.” Managers do not say that kind of thing by accident — it moves the pressure from Maxim Radchenko’s shoulders onto his own, and both of them know it.
Squad30 Apr 2029
Word from the training ground: Yaroslav Mikhailov
The sharpest man in every session this week, by all accounts. Lines like this run the week before somebody’s run in the side begins.
In brief
- Squad Stepan Avdeev is out on the grass again
- Loan watch The clock runs down on Aleksandar Jukić at BATE