The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Livyi Bereh is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yurii Kihnitskyi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at Livyi Bereh 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.
Position 6, 53 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Livyi Bereh can pretend not to have heard.
The gap in the accounts was filled from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be grateful and to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings arrive together.
Vitalii Kozenko 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.
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Boardroom4 Apr 2033
92% of the income goes out in wages at Livyi Bereh
Every club in football 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 somebody has tried it.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Dzhilindo Bezhubchenko is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Livyi Bereh they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad28 Mar 2033
Words at Livyi Bereh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yurii Kihnitskyi 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.
Vitalii Kozenko 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 Yevhen Kondratiuk is on it.
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 Livyi Bereh would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
Position 6, 53 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Livyi Bereh will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
5 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Livyi Bereh could ask drops and the wages Christian Falk can ask rise.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Livyi Bereh have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Half the programme played, position 5, 26 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
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.
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Boardroom29 Nov 2032
Nobody arrives at Livyi Bereh until somebody leaves
The club is not barred from spending; it simply has nothing to spend that it has not first raised. Every name linked with Livyi Bereh this window arrives with a name leaving in the same sentence.
The dugout29 Nov 2032
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Interim Coach was not hiding it after 1‑1, and nobody in the Livyi Bereh dressing room was either.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Nicholas Osei-Bonsu will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Livyi Bereh the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
Vitalii Kozenko 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.
Squad11 Oct 2032
5 new faces, and Livyi Bereh 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.
The dugout11 Oct 2032
The manager has not finished forgetting Ruslan Harmash's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
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 clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Livyi Bereh is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“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 Livyi Bereh, and it is not being withdrawn.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Jürgen Seidel has agreed terms with Nyva for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Anton Vanat has just signed for Livyi Bereh, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad14 Jun 2032
Words at Livyi Bereh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Wendell 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.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Livyi Bereh will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.