“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 The request is on a desk at Astrakhan, and it is not being withdrawn.
“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.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Words at Astrakhan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Renat Malomusov 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Astrakhan, and it is not being withdrawn.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Astrakhan they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Ilja Levchenkov has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Hassan Idris 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.
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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Astrakhan, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Kirill Pluzhnikov 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Astrakhan, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Astrakhan have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Astrakhan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Astrakhan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Renat Malomusov 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.
37 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Astrakhan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 9.52 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Astrakhan can pretend not to have heard.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Astrakhan, and 3 appearances in 10 say he has earned the hearing.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Semyon Radostev. 2‑0 against Druzhba, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
The award is a small thing with a heavy meaning: for four weeks nobody in this division did his job better. Astrakhan have the trophy on a shelf and the player in the side.
The words a physio says slowly. 80 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.
“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 Astrakhan, and it is not being withdrawn.
Kirill Pluzhnikov 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.
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Astrakhan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Renat Malomusov 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.
88 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Astrakhan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Semyon Radostev was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.15. 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.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Kirill Pluzhnikov. 2‑0 against Nart, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Nobody sells a season ticket on a signing like this. Every manager who has been through a bad October wants one anyway, and Astrakhan have gone and got theirs early.
In brief
Player ratingsYassin Hamdi could not find anything
95 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Astrakhan 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 Astrakhan can pretend not to have heard.
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.
102 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Astrakhan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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 Astrakhan, and it is not being withdrawn.
6 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.
6 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Astrakhan can tell you which week it ends in.
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.
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.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Legion? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
The words a physio says slowly. 110 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.
“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.
The terraces24 Aug 2026
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 10 of the 23 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Astrakhan has to find a result from somewhere.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
A first appearance Danil Sizov will want to forget — 5.56
Everybody's debut is one of two stories and this was the other one. 5.56, and the only consolation available is that nobody's career has ever been decided by ninety minutes in a shirt he had just been given.
5 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Astrakhan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.