A long-serving supporter doesn't know how to simply be happy. It's a skill that atrophies after the third season. In its place come wariness, superstition and a constant feeling that something is going wrong, even when everything is going right.

Baltika leads 1:0. Twenty minutes to go.

Sergei isn't celebrating. Sergei is counting.

Twenty minutes is one thousand two hundred seconds of playing time, plus stoppages, plus added time. Realistically, twenty-five minutes or so, if the referee is generous. Twenty-five minutes at 1:0 isn't a win, it's a hypothesis. You don't celebrate hypotheses. You test them - anxiously and with good posture.

The neighbour in the next seat is already smiling. Taking photos of the pitch. Sergei looks at him with the mild professional sympathy of a doctor who sees a patient in an excellent mood and already knows what the test results are about to say.

When Baltika scores first, Sergei's first thought isn't joy. His first thought is: "Too early."

It happens automatically, without any involvement of the conscious mind. The ball hits the net, the stadium rises, Sergei rises with everyone else, his arms go up by themselves - and simultaneously, somewhere in the background, a separate process is already running that methodically lists everything that could go wrong. A red card in the middle of the half. A last-minute penalty for a foul nobody saw except the referee. An injury to the goalkeeper. An inexplicable goal from the halfway line, the kind that happens once a season, precisely when it's least wanted - as if the football god periodically checks whether you've relaxed, and if you have, well, here you go.

Sergei sits down. Applauds. Looks at the pitch with the expression of a man who's just received good news from a stranger and is waiting to see how it ends.

Seventy-fifth minute. Still 1:0.

In the fans' chat people write "holding on". It's the right word - holding on, not winning. Winning is what gets written in the match report after the final whistle. Until that moment, what's happening on the pitch is the current state of affairs, temporary and conditional, like peace during a ceasefire.

Sergei writes nothing in the chat. He knows: to write "that's it, the win's in the bag" in the seventy-fifth minute is to take on cosmic responsibility for whatever happens next. This isn't superstition. It is, if you think about it, respect for the match. Modesty. Almost humility.

Someone in the chat writes it anyway: "that's it, on to the medals."

Sergei reads it and for a second his stomach knots. He doesn't reply. He just looks at the pitch and silently asks this person never to do that again.

Eighty-third. The opponent crosses. The ball goes into the box. A defender heads it clear - good, clean, far.

Sergei exhales. Not with relief - technically. Like a man noting: episode closed, the next one opens in thirty seconds. Beside him the neighbour says "phew" and laughs. Sergei doesn't laugh. Laughing at 1:0 in the eighty-third minute is roughly like laughing while crossing the road. Maybe it'll all be fine. But why get distracted.

Vitya texts from home - he didn't come, he's watching on TV: "Come on, get on with it." Sergei puts the phone away. Vitya doesn't understand. Vitya never understands. Vitya is the kind of man who as a child read books from the end to know how they finished, and found this perfectly normal.

Added time. Four minutes.

Four minutes is a lot. All sorts of things have happened in four minutes in Russian football. Sergei doesn't recall specific cases - he just knows they happened, keeps that knowledge somewhere around the solar plexus, and at 1:0 in added time it makes itself felt with the punctuality of an old injury.

He's standing. Everyone's standing. The stadium is roaring. Sergei roars with everyone else, but inside there's total silence and a very focused, almost meditative waiting. He isn't watching the ball. He's watching the referee. The ball is a variable. The referee is a constant. When the referee raises the whistle to his lips, that's when it all gets decided.

The opponent gets a corner.

Sergei isn't breathing. That's not a metaphor - he physically stops breathing and only notices afterwards, when the ball sails over the bar and his lungs remember on their own that they know how to work.

The referee looks at his watch.

The referee blows.

Now you can.

Sergei doesn't jump. Doesn't shout. He does what he always does at this moment: slowly, with dignity, he exhales, looks at the scoreboard, reads the score one more time - just to make sure - and only then allows himself the expression that from the outside looks like a restrained smile and from the inside feels like something very large that simply doesn't have enough room inside one person.

The neighbour hugs him. Sergei hugs back - a little surprised, but sincerely.

"Well, that was good, wasn't it," says the neighbour.

"It was good," says Sergei.

And it's true. He just has a different scale of "good" - one where joy and relief long ago stopped being different things, and a win feels not like a celebration but like the exhale after holding your breath for a very long time.

In the chat people write "easy win". The one who wrote "we'll finish them off now" in the seventy-fifth now writes "told you so". Sergei reads it and magnanimously says nothing.

Vitya calls a minute later.

"Well?"

"That's that," says Sergei.

They're silent for about three seconds. Then Vitya says: "You going on Saturday too?" Sergei says: "Where else would I be." Vitya laughs.

Sergei laughs too. Now he can.