Marked for Ivan Chalavach
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces7 Jan 2036
Anger at Lokomotiv Gomel spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Boardroom7 Jan 2036
Pressure builds in the Lokomotiv Gomel boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Boardroom7 Jan 2036
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Market7 Jan 2036
“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.
Boardroom7 Jan 2036
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
Squad7 Jan 2036
A change in the dugout is not one story, it is twenty-five of them. This is Konstantin Veretynskiy's: he was somebody's player, and now he has to be somebody else's, starting from nothing.
Squad7 Jan 2036
Ismael Lozano asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Squad7 Jan 2036
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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad26 Nov 2035
Eduard Kislyak damages knee ligaments — 17 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 17 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.
Market26 Nov 2035
Anton Bykau hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Lokomotiv Gomel can pretend not to have heard.
Squad26 Nov 2035
45 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Boardroom26 Nov 2035
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
Squad26 Nov 2035
The manager makes an example of Deklan Wood
“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.
Market26 Nov 2035
He is 20, and nobody at Lokomotiv Gomel signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market29 Oct 2035
“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.
Squad29 Oct 2035
Nikita Robak in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lokomotiv Gomel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom29 Oct 2035
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
Squad29 Oct 2035
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.
Squad29 Oct 2035
Furkan Kabaca asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Squad29 Oct 2035
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Lokomotiv Gomel told Maksim Ihnatovich something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad1 Oct 2035
Vadzim Martynovich damages knee ligaments — 22 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 22 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.
Market1 Oct 2035
Rio Owen hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Lokomotiv Gomel can pretend not to have heard.
Squad1 Oct 2035
Felipe Vizeu 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.
Boardroom1 Oct 2035
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
Squad1 Oct 2035
Felipe Vizeu loses the manager who believed in him
A change in the dugout is not one story, it is twenty-five of them. This is Felipe Vizeu's: he was somebody's player, and now he has to be somebody else's, starting from nothing.
Squad1 Oct 2035
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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match16 Jun 2035
19 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.
Match18 Jun 2035
7 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Market18 Jun 2035
“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.
Market18 Jun 2035
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Lokomotiv Gomel they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad18 Jun 2035
Ruslan Palitsevich 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.
Squad18 Jun 2035
Anton Palitsevich 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.
Player ratings18 Jun 2035
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match16 Jun 2035
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad18 Jun 2035
27 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces16 Oct 2034
Anger at Lokomotiv Gomel spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Squad16 Oct 2034
Raman Filipenko damages knee ligaments — 15 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 15 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.
Boardroom16 Oct 2034
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Lokomotiv Gomel is running low.
Match16 Oct 2034
Position 13, 6 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Market16 Oct 2034
“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 Lokomotiv Gomel, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad16 Oct 2034
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lokomotiv Gomel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad4 Sep 2034
55 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Lokomotiv Gomel lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market4 Sep 2034
“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 Lokomotiv Gomel, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad4 Sep 2034
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Raman Filipenko and Lokomotiv Gomel agree another 4 years.
Squad4 Sep 2034
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lokomotiv Gomel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom4 Sep 2034
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
Squad4 Sep 2034
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Hubert Muszyński trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.