Marked for Dilshod Jo'rayev
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market14 Sep 2026
Jelgava come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Ventspils did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market14 Sep 2026
“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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Marcis Tarasovs 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match12 Aug 2026
Ventspils march on in the cup
Daugavpils are out and Ventspils go through, 1‑0 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
A debut Nikita Stolcers will not forget — 7.95
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 1 on the scoresheet, 7.95 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
Match12 Aug 2026
Ventspils win it in stoppage time
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 104th minute. Daugavpils will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 29. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Karel Soldát 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.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
At 19 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
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Ventspils have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad17 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Pavels Fertovs
“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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Karel Soldát has outgrown this division
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Ventspils know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Marcis Tarasovs commits to Ventspils for another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 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 Ventspils this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Vitalijs Ikaunieks 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
This league is too small for Ilja Kutepov
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Ventspils will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
Market3 Aug 2026
Still no offer on the table, and Marcis Tarasovs’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
Market3 Aug 2026
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Ventspils has been clear about where Janis Jurkovskis stands, which is more than many ever get.
In brief
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Market
Experience through the door at Ventspils
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Market
Experience through the door at Ventspils