Derby days make names, and Maxim Glushenkov made his against Spartak Moscow. 4‑3, bragging rights secured, and one half of town will be tired of hearing about him by Tuesday.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason CSKA Moscow will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
There are goals, and then there are goals against that particular opponent. The CSKA Moscow support have their bragging rights for a year and they know exactly whose name is on them.
368 appearances across 11 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
69 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CSKA Moscow lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Egor Parkhomenko had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Maxim Glushenkov 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 Jun 2029
Words at CSKA Moscow training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Moisés 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.
Nobody at CSKA Moscow will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
101 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CSKA Moscow lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what CSKA Moscow can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSKA Moscow this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 May 2029
Words at CSKA Moscow training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ivan Oblyakov 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.
Nobody at CSKA Moscow will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and João Victor trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. CSKA Moscow know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Moisés was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
12 shut-outs in 26 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Anton Mitryushkin has been having a lot of them.
Nobody at CSKA Moscow will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.