Zorya close the window on a squad of their own making
14 in and 3 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Egnatia Rrogozhinë is saying, and nobody at Zorya is enjoying the guessing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zorya this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Ivan Holovkin reports back to Zorya with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
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.
Karpaty did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $2.8M for Yan Kostenko, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
$3.5M was the most the club would pay and Shakhtar were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
The offer from Karpaty for Vladyslav Rybak was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Olimpia is saying, and nobody at Zorya is enjoying the guessing.
Marian Shved 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.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Yan Kostenko from Karpaty for $2.8M, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
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.
20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Zorya lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 112th minute. Feniks will replay every second of the added time for a week.
The offer from Al-Ra'ed for Artem Slesar was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Artem Slesar did not need any: 8.04, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
$3.5M on the table at Shakhtar. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The offer went to Karpaty this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
$3.7M was the most the club would pay and Slovan Bratislava were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Zorya have done the hard part with Olimpia, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
The words a physio says slowly. 28 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
LNZ did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $3.8M for Denys Kuzyk, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
The offer went to Slovan Bratislava this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Zorya had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Grasshopper, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Jakov Bašić 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.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Denys Kuzyk from LNZ for $3.8M, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
In brief
SquadWords at Zorya training over how hard people work
36 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Zorya lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Zorya and LNZ have settled on $3.8M. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.85, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Artem Slesar, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.32
A mark of 8.32 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.
$4.6M was the most the club would pay and Dynamo Kyiv were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Zorya had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at AZ, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
This is not cover and nobody is pretending it is. $1.3M has been paid because Marian Shved is straightforwardly better than what was already here, and the club has decided to stop waiting.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Maksym Kovaliov is living that version at Zorya, and it tends to show in the first month.
Zorya had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Empoli, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Successful dribbles: 37. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Two goals and a mark of 8.61 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
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.
Market3 Aug 2026
Zorya may not be able to give Jordan what he wants
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Jordan wants continental football; whether Zorya can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Everything agreed with another club, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
The shirt still fits. Bohdan Butko is back at Zorya, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jordan 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.