In mid-June set-piece coach Artem Buloychik quietly returned to Baltika after a spell away. Below I'll explain why this may be one of the main transfers of the summer - do read on, please 😎

Baltika have a problem that can't be solved with one glamorous transfer. Talalaev's team knows how to suffer, fight, kill the tempo and drag a match into its own working zone. But in matches like that the decisive thing is often not a 14-pass attack but one corner, one throw-in, one second ball. Not positional beauty, but the ability not to waste the episode that's already lying practically at your feet.

The key number in this story isn't Buloychik's surname. The key number is 12.68.

According to FotMob, in the 2025/26 season Baltika accumulated 12.68 xG from set pieces - the fifth-best figure in the RPL. So the problem isn't that the team can't create from corners, free kicks and throw-ins. It can - at the level of Lokomotiv and Dynamo. The problem is that all that work produced just 8 goals: seven from routines and one direct free kick.

That's why Artem Buloychik's return to the club's coaching staff isn't a personnel line in the news. It's an attempt to find goals where Baltika already almost know how to find them.

For a team that finished the 2025/26 season with thirteen draws, "almost" is a very big word.

Set pieces aren't poor man's football

In Russia there's a strange prejudice attached to set pieces. They're often read as something simple: deliver, wrestle, it bounces, tap it in. Almost anti-football. If a team scores from a corner, it got lucky in the air. If from a throw-in, a defender switched off.

In reality a good set piece isn't an accident. It's a pattern, timing, a block, the direction of the run, the second-ball zone and an understanding of who covers the possible counter. In modern football set pieces became a separate profession long ago. Arteta's Arsenal and the England team have shown it at the loudest level - but for Baltika the subject is no less practical: in their matches one corner often weighs as much as an entire half of positional attack.

Buloychik himself, in an interview with Championat, said he'd studied the set pieces of Sarri's Lazio, of Milan, of the England and France national teams, of Klopp's Liverpool:

"That type of delivery, like Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka do it, we were already using at Baltika. Originally that manoeuvre was used by Sarri-era Lazio... We adapted some things for Baltika. I believe that in today's football a dedicated set-piece coach is definitely needed. In any team."

This isn't the cottage-industry "put the tall lad at the near post". It's a method.

Now for scale. In the 2024/25 RPL season, according to RUSTAT, 648 goals were scored in 240 matches. Of those, 300 (46%) came from positional attacks, 150 (23.1%) from set pieces excluding penalties, 130 from fast attacks and 68 from penalties.

Excluding penalties, set pieces produced almost one league goal in four. Including penalties - a third of the championship.

In 2025/26 the leaders for set-piece goals excluding penalties were, by Vedomosti's count, Krasnodar (17), Dynamo Moscow (14) and Lokomotiv (12). Worst of all were Dynamo Makhachkala and Sochi with five goals. The top level in the RPL is 12-17 set-piece goals a season. That's where Baltika should be aiming.

Why this matters more to Baltika than to many

Baltika aren't a team that will smother an opponent with positional attacks and create 15 chances a match. Their football is built on intensity, duels, fouls, the second ball and patience. The season ended with sixth place - but also with thirteen draws.

In a style like that a set piece isn't a fallback route. It's almost a natural continuation of the game.

When you can't always open an opponent up with a pass, you need another mechanism. And Baltika seem to understand this at staff level: Talalaev told Sport-Express that in a normal weekly cycle the team has two set-piece sessions, with an emphasis not only on the strikes but also on filling the second-ball zones.

So Buloychik isn't returning to a place where set pieces are considered a bonus. He's returning to a place where they're already considered one of the foundations.

The main thing: top five for creation, mid-table for conversion

Back to 12.68. The full table of set-piece xG in the 2025/26 RPL according to FotMob:

By FotMob's goal breakdown, Baltika in 2025/26 had: 23 goals from open play, 7 from set-piece situations (corner routines, free-kick deliveries, throw-ins), 1 direct free kick, 6 penalties and 1 own goal. So 8 set-piece goals excluding penalties is the final figure.

Strip away the tables and the meaning is simple: Baltika already get the ball to where a goal should happen. But too often it all ends not with a goal but with a feeling of "almost". That "almost" is exactly the job for Buloychik.

Baltika aren't asking Buloychik to invent an attack from scratch. They already create from set pieces almost like a top team. They don't need to invent a weapon - they need to learn to pull the trigger more often.

Baltika don't need to become Krasnodar at set pieces. A small jump is enough: not 8 goals but 12. That's Lokomotiv's level. And that's no longer cosmetic - it's a chance to turn several "almost wins" into wins.

What already works for Baltika

Buloychik isn't arriving on an empty field. The team already has several ready-made routines.

Beveev's long throws. The main weapon of the season. By the end of March 2026 Baltika had scored 4 goals from throw-ins in the RPL - more than anyone in the league, with Spartak and Akron second on three. The Kaliningrad side equalled the RPL record for throw-in goals in a season going back at least to 2009 - previously four had been managed by Zenit in 2018/19 and Lokomotiv in 2024/25. In a category where almost nobody scores, Baltika lead by a distance.

Corners. In the match against Dynamo Makhachkala (2:2) Varatynov scored from a structured combination: Ilya Petrov's delivery - Ivan Belikov's headed flick to the far post - Varatynov finished it off. Not individual magic but a pre-rehearsed routine with zones allocated.

Free kicks. In round 24 against Pari NN (2:2) substitute Eldar Civic equalised in the 48th minute - a direct free kick from 25 metres. Medvedev set up a wall of just two men, Civic curled it low around them into the near corner. The most curious thing about that match: both of Baltika's goals came from set pieces - Civic from the free kick and Maksim Petrov from the penalty spot. A perfect case study in how the team can pick up points in matches that are going badly.

What Buloychik has already done at Baltika

This is his second spell in Kaliningrad. In the first he worked exactly two seasons - from June 2022 to June 2024, on Sergei Ignashevich's staff, specifically as set-piece coach. And they were two very different seasons.

2022/23, First League. Ignashevich's Baltika were the best in the division at set pieces by a distance. After 11 rounds - 9 set-piece goals and first place on that measure by a clear margin. By the end of the season - 6 goals from throw-ins, the best figure in the First League. That in large part made the team what it was: one that produced the legendary 30-match unbeaten run and returned to the RPL after 25 years.

Ignashevich himself back then described Buloychik's area of responsibility without any vague wording:

2023/24, RPL. Here, honestly - a failure. In the RPL Baltika scored just 4 set-piece goals all season, and 2 of them were penalties. So from set pieces in open play - two goals in 30 rounds. Neither the winter reinforcements, nor keeping the methodology, nor the same staff helped. The team finished 15th and went down.

There's a nuance that partly restores the picture: in the Russian Cup that same season Baltika reached the superfinal, and set pieces played a crucial role in that run - first place in the competition for shots after set pieces (36) and 5 goals from them on the way to the final (same source). So the routines worked "in the big matches". In the routine of the league - they didn't.

That asymmetry is the main lesson of the first spell: the step from the First League to the RPL isn't just a rise in the quality of opponents. It's a complete rebuild of set pieces for different defensive lines, tighter marking and faster aerial play. What worked almost automatically in the First League required, in the RPL, a different quality of delivery, different men in the opposition box and different running patterns.

Buloychik returns with that understanding. This is no longer "another go with the same suitcase" - it's a second attempt with the mistake analysed.

What Shinnik taught him

The interlude between the two Baltikas is the most important chapter for understanding who Kaliningrad is getting in the summer of 2026.

In January 2025 Buloychik left for Shinnik Yaroslavl - first as senior coach, and in April he took charge of the team. Shinnik finished 2025/26 eighth in the First League: 34 matches, 11 wins, 15 draws, 8 defeats. On points - solid mid-table. In substance - something else.

Shinnik scored just 34 goals, 21 of them from set pieces. 62%. At mid-season the share reached 77% (17 of 22). The team's top scorer wasn't a striker but centre-back Daniil Kornyushin - 6 goals and 3 assists in 31 matches, the best defender in the 2025/26 First League.

Shinnik's numbers don't transfer directly to the RPL - the marking, physicality and speed are on another level there. But the logic of the method transfers almost entirely. And that's exactly what Buloychik is bringing to Kaliningrad.

In short: the first spell at Baltika was about talent. The second is about method.

Set pieces aren't only about scoring

And here begins the part people usually keep quiet about.

Set pieces are also about not conceding.

If a team makes them its weapon, it automatically takes on an obligation to defend just as seriously against the opposition's. Opponents will quickly work it out: against Baltika you won't always be able to create a chance from open play, so you have to load the box, look for a foul, a corner, a long throw.

This subject has an unpleasant flip side: a team that fights a lot and fouls a lot regularly gives the opponent the same kind of episodes. So a set-piece coach isn't needed only for the opposition box. He's needed so the team understands where you can foul and where you can't, who stays back for the second ball, who's responsible for the near post, who covers the far.

In that very match against Pari NN, where Baltika scored two from set pieces, they also lost two points to a set piece. At 90+1 Sven Karič equalised with a direct free kick from 25 metres - exactly the same trick Civic had used earlier. Two dropped points arrived by the same road that should have brought them to Baltika.

That symmetry is the best argument that the set-piece coach's role in modern football is two-sided.

The anti-hype paragraph: Buloychik isn't a magician

Set pieces don't work at the push of a button. You can't just bring a specialist back, move the counters around the board twice and get ten extra goals. In the RPL opponents watch video too, prepare man-marking and quickly get used to other people's tricks. Any successful routine lives until the opposition's analysts have picked it apart.

But Baltika don't need a magic trick. A small increment is enough. One extra goal from a corner. One from a throw-in. One from a second ball. In their football that can already be the difference between 0:0 and 1:0.

THE FINALE

For Baltika set pieces aren't a decoration on football. They're a way not to depend on the market.

Because a forward costs money. A player for positional attack costs money. A creative number ten costs money. But 3-4 set-piece goals can be found inside the team you already have - through structure, timing, blocks, second balls and repeat deliveries.

That's why Buloychik's return isn't a small piece of staff news. It's an attempt to find a few extra goals where Baltika already have the weapon lying around. Not on the transfer market - inside their own team.

And a few extra goals aren't just statistics. They're places in the table.

In brief

  • Baltika are top five in the RPL for set-piece xG (12.68).
  • The problem is conversion, not ideas: 8 actual goals against 12.68 expected, a gap of −4.7.
  • The benchmark is 12-14 goals a season, Lokomotiv's level. That's a chance to turn several "almost wins" into wins.
  • Beveev's throw-ins have already become a rare weapon in the league - 4 goals, equalling the RPL record.
  • In his first spell at Baltika Buloychik made the team the best in the First League at set pieces (2022/23: 9 goals after 11 rounds, 6 from throw-ins). In the 2023/24 RPL he ran into a failure (4 goals, 2 of them penalties) - and has already worked through that experience.
  • At Shinnik in 2025/26 he took the share of set-piece goals to 62% for the season and formulated the method: a catalogue of options, 2-4 routines per match, a separate methodology for throw-ins.
  • Defending set pieces is the mandatory second half of the task. Karič's goal at 90+1 against Pari NN is a graphic example of the price of that kind of mistake.

Subscribe - https://t.me/BalticaB