15 Aug 2026
Saturday
Process
2 Edition

The Metalist Herald

10 Aug 2026
From our football correspondent Uneasy

Player ratings

Nobody could get near Artem Kozak

Successful dribbles: 33. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.

Squad

Artem Kozak arrives at the club he grew up with

Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Artem Kozak has, at Metalist, and the first month will show what that does to a man.

Squad

Metalist count the cost of losing Danil Prymak

41 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.

Squad

Kyrylo Dihtiar signs on for more

“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Kyrylo Dihtiar and Metalist agree another 5 years.

Squad

Roman Vantukh in a row with a teammate

It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Metalist this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.

Transfer targets

Plymouth Argyle tell Metalist: Aribim Pepple is not for sale

The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.

Market

Metalist promote Yevhen Harmash from within

The academy exists for exactly this morning. Yevhen Harmash has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.

Market

One of our own: Kostiantyn Buialskyi joins the Metalist first team

Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Kostiantyn Buialskyi is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.

Market

One of our own: Roman Sirenko joins the Metalist first team

Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Roman Sirenko is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.

In brief

Back issues
1 Edition

The Metalist Herald

3 Aug 2026
From our football correspondent Uneasy

Player ratings

A brace, and Vasyl Lutsiv takes the afternoon — 8.69

There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Vasyl Lutsiv provided it, and the 8.69 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.

Squad

A move Volodymyr Makhankov would have made for nothing

There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Volodymyr Makhankov is living that version at Metalist, and it tends to show in the first month.

Player ratings

Nobody could get near Daniel Vernattus

Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.

Squad

Petro Lutsiv signs a new deal

“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Petro Lutsiv commits to Metalist for another 4 years.

Squad

Tempers go at Metalist

Kyrylo Dihtiar 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.

Squad

Oleksandr Myziuk 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.

Match

Late, late show earns Metalist a point

Minute 96, against UCSA, and a goal that felt like a win to everybody who had stayed. It was a draw. Nobody leaving the ground will describe it as one.

Market

Metalist and Daniil Tepliakov are talking past each other

“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.

Market

Nobody at Metalist has picked up the phone to Yevhenii Isaienko

49 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.

In brief