Marked for Samat Postnikov
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom10 Mar 2031
Four paragraphs on the club website, none of them about football. The board thanked him, wished him well, and had the search under way before the page went up.
Boardroom10 Mar 2031
An empty coaching office at Taraz
There is nobody left to promote and nobody left to run a session. The board have brought in a name the supporters do not know, and the question of how a club gets here will outlast whoever answers it.
Boardroom10 Mar 2031
“Somebody picks the team on Saturday. This week it is me, and that is as far as I have thought.” No promises were made in either direction, which is how these usually begin.
The dugout10 Mar 2031
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Taraz may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad10 Mar 2031
Words exchanged at Taraz
Rubinho 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.
Squad10 Mar 2031
Samat Postnikov gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Samat Postnikov has just signed for Taraz, and for once the answer mattered.
Boardroom10 Mar 2031
9 academy players handed senior numbers at Taraz
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Squad10 Mar 2031
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Arseny Vainer and Taraz agree another 3 years.
Transfer targets10 Mar 2031
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Aktobe have kept their man, and Taraz go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match4 May 2030
Shakhter will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Okzhetpes were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Market6 May 2030
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Okzhetpes can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings6 May 2030
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.84 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Player ratings6 May 2030
Up for the corner, and Dmitriy Borodin delivers — 7.84
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Dmitriy Borodin scored, was marked 7.84, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Market6 May 2030
Only the photograph left for Dauren Shomko
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Dauren Shomko will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Okzhetpes the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Match4 May 2030
It had gone 6 games. The players did not celebrate like men who had won a match; they celebrated like men who had been let out of something.
Squad6 May 2030
Elijah Scott 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.
Squad6 May 2030
Words exchanged at Okzhetpes
Ruslan Slavin 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 terraces6 May 2030
At 22 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad11 Feb 2030
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 72 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market11 Feb 2030
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market11 Feb 2030
Dauren Shomko has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Okzhetpes they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Transfer targets11 Feb 2030
Okzhetpes have gone to Shakhter with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Transfer targets11 Feb 2030
$57.0K was the most the club would pay and Kairat were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Squad11 Feb 2030
A row about effort at Okzhetpes
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Elijah Scott was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets11 Feb 2030
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Astana have kept their man, and Okzhetpes go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad11 Feb 2030
Miras Zhaqsymbetov 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.
Market11 Feb 2030
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Okzhetpes, another week without a signature from João Borim.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Boardroom15 Oct 2029
Zhetysu will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Vladislav Kostryukov has pre-agreed a move to Okzhetpes, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Squad15 Oct 2029
A row about effort at Okzhetpes
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Elijah Scott was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad15 Oct 2029
Words exchanged at Okzhetpes
Miras Zhaqsymbetov 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.
Loan watch15 Oct 2029
20 appearances at Atyrau and the goals keep coming. Okzhetpes are watching this more closely than the borrowing club would like.
The dugout15 Oct 2029
Nobody at Okzhetpes 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.
Market15 Oct 2029
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Baurzhan Tymoshchuk has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Okzhetpes.
The dugout15 Oct 2029
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout15 Oct 2029
Maksym Dykyi is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Squad15 Oct 2029
Léo still has not settled
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Okzhetpes would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.