Marked for Sergey Yeschenko
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad28 Sep 2026
31 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Spartak Kostroma lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
“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.
Match26 Sep 2026
The unbeaten run reaches 7. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Amur Kalmykov and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Spartak Kostroma training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nikolay Tarasov 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.
Match26 Sep 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Đorđe Pantelić. 2‑1 against Fakel, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Marked 8.61 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
“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 Sep 2026
Ninety minutes of Đorđe Pantelić at his very best
Marked 8.53. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Spartak Kostroma.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad21 Sep 2026
38 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Spartak Kostroma lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
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 Spartak Kostroma this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match19 Sep 2026
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 6 matches without defeat is a foundation Spartak Kostroma did not have in the autumn.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nader Mohammadi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The manager makes an example of Dawid Polkowski
“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 ratings21 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Marked 7.95 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Spartak Kostroma had the best player on the pitch.
Squad21 Sep 2026
16 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.
Match19 Sep 2026
A 1‑1 draw with Arsenal Tula leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad17 Aug 2026
Amur Kalmykov 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 Aug 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nikolay Tarasov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Match15 Aug 2026
A 2‑1 win over Yenisey, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Market17 Aug 2026
A stepping stone, not a home, for Dawid Polkowski
He is doing his job and he is not settling. Spartak Kostroma were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Ilja Rubtsov was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.36. 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Squad17 Aug 2026
16 new faces, and Spartak Kostroma 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 dugout17 Aug 2026
“That is what I want every week. Not the result, the way they went about it.” The manager, after 2‑1, already talking about the next one.