“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 The request is on a desk at Sokol, and it is not being withdrawn.
Walter Montoya 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.
8.50. 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.
4 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.
Nikita Pechenkin 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 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
“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 The request is on a desk at Sokol, and it is not being withdrawn.
4 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.
Walter Montoya 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 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Sokol can tell you which week it ends in.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sokol, another week without a signature from Gonzalo Torres.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Ali Al-Mahdawi has just signed for Sokol, and for once the answer mattered.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Sokol are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sokol this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There was one mistake and it ended in the net. Defenders are judged on the worst thing they did rather than on the eighty-nine minutes either side of it, which is unfair and is also the job.
Position 18 and 9 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sokol this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Quvonch Xushvaqtov has just signed for Sokol, and for once the answer mattered.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Walter Montoya 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.
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Sokol may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Anton Mukhin, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.76
A mark of 7.76 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Sokol are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sokol this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Roman Pasevich 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sokol can pretend not to have heard.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.93 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Walter Montoya 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ivan Churikov 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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Sokol told Ivan Churikov something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Vladimir Kovačević 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 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.
“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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
6 new faces, and Sokol 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Walter Montoya 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 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.
16 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sokol this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 9.15 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
“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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Ivan Churikov 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sokol, another week without a signature from Walter Montoya.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Walter Montoya 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.
Artem Bykov 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.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Mikhail Levashov knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sokol this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Roman Pasevich 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.
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.
19 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Walter Montoya 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.
21 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
3 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ivan Churikov 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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Ilja Yezhov is living that version at Sokol, and it tends to show in the first month.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sokol this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Walter Montoya 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.
Cherepovets will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Elnur Khalygov has pre-agreed a move to Sokol, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Ilja Yezhov is 20, and Sokol have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Vladimir Kovačević 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Ivan Churikov 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.
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
16 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Sokol has been clear about where Anton Yegorushkin stands, which is more than many ever get.