Marked for Parvizjon Umarbaev
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad9 Nov 2026
A day Anton Fase will not forget
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Parvizjon Umarbaev 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 ratings9 Nov 2026
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.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
A performance of 9.68 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Nasko Milev was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.41. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Anton Fase 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.
Match9 Nov 2026
Position 11, 15 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
“That is what I want every week. Not the result, the way they went about it.” The manager, after 3‑1, already talking about the next one.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match19 Sep 2026
The run now stands at 6, and the questions being asked around Lokomotiv Plovdiv are no longer polite ones.
Match19 Sep 2026
Two or more conceded in each of the last 6 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
Squad21 Sep 2026
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 Plovdiv this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Lokomotiv Plovdiv training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nikola Soldo 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.
Match19 Sep 2026
Ludogorets left with the points after a 1‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Transfer targets21 Sep 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. NK Domzale have kept their man, and Lokomotiv Plovdiv go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
Efe Ali gets it from the manager
“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 dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑3 defeat, delivered by Simeon Petrov to a room that had heard them before.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
Rui Areias gets picked when it counts
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 Rui Areias is on it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad3 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Rui Areias arrives at the club he grew up with
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Rui Areias has, at Lokomotiv Plovdiv, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Parvizjon Umarbaev and Lokomotiv Plovdiv agree another 3 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Parvizjon Umarbaev 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 targets3 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. FC Dallas have kept their man, and Lokomotiv Plovdiv go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Match1 Aug 2026
Botev Vratsa left with the points after a 1‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Bojan Milosavljević, and the manager let it.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market3 Aug 2026
36 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.