Marked for Dmitri Rybakov
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market28 Jul 2031
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Akhmat people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Squad28 Jul 2031
A falling-out at Akhmat
Arsen Adamov and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets28 Jul 2031
The offer went to Rubin this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Squad28 Jul 2031
Daniil Khlusevich 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.
Boardroom28 Jul 2031
Akhmat still without a manager
13 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
Transfer targets28 Jul 2031
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
The dugout28 Jul 2031
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings28 Jul 2031
7.52, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Akhmat had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad28 Jul 2031
Too much change too quickly at Akhmat
6 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market3 Mar 2031
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and SKA Khabarovsk waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Akhmat is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Match3 Mar 2031
Full time on the season at Akhmat
Position 9 on 39 points. Every season is a story and this is the last line of it, and now the club has three months to decide what the next one is about.
Player ratings3 Mar 2031
A brace, and Daniil Khlusevich takes the afternoon — 8.42
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Daniil Khlusevich provided it, and the 8.42 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Boardroom3 Mar 2031
He arrived for a fee and leaves for a fraction of it. $111.7K of what Akhmat paid for Denis Faizullin is money the club will not see again, and the boardroom will be asked about it for two seasons.
Market3 Mar 2031
“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.
Squad3 Mar 2031
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Lechi Sadulaev commits to Akhmat for another 3 years.
Squad3 Mar 2031
A falling-out at Akhmat
Alexandr Chernikov and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad3 Mar 2031
Everybody at Akhmat saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 34 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Transfer targets3 Mar 2031
Akhmat asked and Spartak Moscow said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market22 Jul 2030
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Akhmat have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Squad22 Jul 2030
9 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
The dugout22 Jul 2030
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Player ratings22 Jul 2030
Two goals and a mark of 8.64 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Transfer targets22 Jul 2030
Akhmat and Spartak Moscow have settled on $1.6M. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Market22 Jul 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.
Market22 Jul 2030
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad22 Jul 2030
Words exchanged at Akhmat
Alexandr Chernikov 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.
Transfer targets22 Jul 2030
$200.0K was the most the club would pay and Krylya Sovetov 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market15 Jul 2030
“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 Akhmat, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad15 Jul 2030
A falling-out at Akhmat
Alexandr Chernikov and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Market15 Jul 2030
Add another name to the list: Ryazan have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Dmitri Rybakov. The answer from Akhmat has not changed — yet.
Market15 Jul 2030
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Squad15 Jul 2030
“The easiest signature of my career.” Nicolò Troiani and Akhmat agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad15 Jul 2030
Words at Akhmat training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Oleg Nikiforenko 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.
The dugout15 Jul 2030
Marvin Çuni knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Marvin Çuni trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Looking ahead15 Jul 2030
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Maxim Turischev’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Akhmat needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Squad15 Jul 2030
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 Akhmat would admit. It shows on Saturdays.