The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Lida is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Franciszek Liszka 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pavel Vakulich was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Lida, another week without a signature from Pavel Vakulich.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Lida would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Lida, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Maxim Drozdov 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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Lida would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Lida, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Maxim Drozdov 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.
Franciszek Liszka 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 deal with BATE is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Denis Khodyko 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.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Lida can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mario Balakov 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.
In brief
The dugoutDenis Khodyko asks for a word with the manager
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Anton Stasevich has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Lida can pretend not to have heard.
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Maxim Shamrin has just signed for Lida, and for once the answer mattered.
Denis Khodyko 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.
The shortfall was covered from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be relieved and entitled to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings usually arrive together.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.