Marked for Daniel Jiménez
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market15 Jul 2041
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what BATE can pretend not to have heard.
Market15 Jul 2041
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at BATE is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Market15 Jul 2041
Add another name to the list: Volna Pinsk have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Jeremías Biani. The answer from BATE has not changed — yet.
Market15 Jul 2041
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Artur Yangaev reports back to BATE with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Squad15 Jul 2041
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at BATE this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings15 Jul 2041
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad15 Jul 2041
Words at BATE training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dylan Murugesapillai 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.
Match13 Jul 2041
It needed Karim Pouraliganji to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against Volna Pinsk, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Boardroom15 Jul 2041
Wages eat 92% of everything BATE earn
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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad25 Mar 2041
Mohammed Dayyabu damages knee ligaments — 90 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 90 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad25 Mar 2041
A fracture rules Anton Gordeichuk out for 84 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason BATE will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market25 Mar 2041
“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 BATE, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market25 Mar 2041
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around BATE they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad25 Mar 2041
Tempers go at BATE
Karim Pouraliganji 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.
Squad25 Mar 2041
Words at BATE training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jeremías Biani 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.
Player ratings25 Mar 2041
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.16, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Match23 Mar 2041
No time for Belshina to settle
The goal that put Belshina ahead was still being replayed on the concourse when BATE equalised, 4 minutes later. Leads are only worth what you do with them.
Match23 Mar 2041
It needed Joan Velázquez to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against Belshina, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match3 Oct 2040
BATE come up short in Europe
1‑2 away to the standard of Ruch. Nobody will pretend this was a scandal; the gap is real, it is measurable, and closing it is a project rather than a team talk.
Squad8 Oct 2040
Defences have started doubling up on Renato Bianco
26 goals and a season average of 7.38 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Market8 Oct 2040
Erik Kampl has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around BATE they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Match3 Oct 2040
The wait goes on for BATE
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad8 Oct 2040
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Maxim Kononov and BATE agree another 2 years.
Squad8 Oct 2040
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at BATE this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad8 Oct 2040
Words at BATE training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Karim Pouraliganji 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.
Match3 Oct 2040
BATE leaking at the back
4 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Player ratings8 Oct 2040
Successful dribbles: 7. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad17 Oct 2039
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” BATE may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market17 Oct 2039
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around BATE they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad17 Oct 2039
Tempers go at BATE
Dylan Murugesapillai 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.
Squad17 Oct 2039
Karim Pouraliganji 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.
Boardroom17 Oct 2039
137% of the income goes out in wages at BATE
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.
Squad17 Oct 2039
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.