Marked for Sergio Rodríguez
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market1 Mar 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Chornomorets can pretend not to have heard.
Squad1 Mar 2027
He is 21, he is averaging 7.17, and older professionals have started passing to him in the difficult minutes. That last part is the real scouting report.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Maksym Luniov 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.
Market1 Mar 2027
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Chornomorets have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad1 Mar 2027
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Chornomorets know it.
Market1 Mar 2027
Vladyslav Kulach has left for Vorskla in a $54.0K deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad1 Feb 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Vladyslav Kulach
92 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Chornomorets lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 31 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market1 Feb 2027
Sagan Tosu come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Chornomorets did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Match30 Jan 2027
Chornomorets make home a hard place to visit
15 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Market1 Feb 2027
“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.
Player ratings1 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 29. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match30 Jan 2027
The unbeaten run reaches 10. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad1 Feb 2027
A season average of 7.12 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Chornomorets know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Berat Eskin gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Berat Eskin has just signed for Chornomorets, and for once the answer mattered.
From our football correspondent
Steady
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
Maksym Luniov 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 ratings17 Aug 2026
Defensive actions: 18. He was first to everything and second to nothing, and the goalkeeper had an easy day because of it.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Chornomorets training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Vladyslav Kulach 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
5 new faces, and Chornomorets 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.
Market17 Aug 2026
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Magomed Kratov has his answer from Chornomorets; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Squad17 Aug 2026
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Chornomorets know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Market17 Aug 2026
Sergio Rodríguez is 37 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Market17 Aug 2026
At 36, he has seen every situation this season can produce, twice. The legs will be managed; the head is the purchase.