The Sochi Sentinel
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Ilja Pomazun due for a Sochi medical
Everything agreed with Spartak Moscow, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
No thanks: Viktor Baier rejects the move
Sochi had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Viktoria Plzen, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Sochi
Baqtiiar Zainutdinov 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.
Market7 Sep 2026
Orenburg join the queue for Pavel Meleshin
Add another name to the list: Orenburg have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Pavel Meleshin. The answer from Sochi has not changed — yet.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A row about effort at Sochi
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Alexandr Soldatenkov was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Door shut on Dardan Shabanhaxhaj
Sochi asked and Rubin said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad7 Sep 2026
9 new faces, and Sochi 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Igor Kalinin is no longer first choice
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Igor Kalinin has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Looking ahead7 Sep 2026
Alexandr Soldatenkov faces his old club
Krylya Sovetov next, and one man in the Sochi dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
In brief
- Market Still no ink between Sochi and Luca Foubert
- The dugout Ruslan Bart knocks on the manager's door
- Market Ivan Timoshenko arrives on loan