72 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Irtysh lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Richard Golovachev was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
100 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Irtysh lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings3 Mar 2036
Rostislav Savin, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.77
A mark of 7.77 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.
João Ricardo and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad3 Mar 2036
Morten Sætra 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.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Muhammed Demiral has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Irtysh have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
He is doing things every Saturday that nobody around him can answer. It is flattering for a season and a problem after that, and Irtysh know which stage they are at.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Irtysh will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Irtysh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Dec 2035
Words at Irtysh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Richard Golovachev 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.
At 33, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Ramazan Ibragimov has his answer from Irtysh; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Rodina 2 in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Nobody at Irtysh will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Irtysh they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
João Ricardo 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.
Successful dribbles: 20. 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.
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.
“I could talk about decisions and I could talk about luck. I will not. We lost.” The manager, 0‑1, and a press conference that lasted four minutes.
Squad29 Oct 2035
5 new faces, and Irtysh are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Vladislav Poletaev 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.
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 Vladislav Poletaev is on it.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Irtysh will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Omar Radwan is 37 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.