On 6 July Moscow hosted the first Winline RPL Heroes ceremony in a media-evening format, intimate, separate from the big stage on the ninth. For the first time in its history the league created a dedicated category for local writers: one per club, sixteen people, sixteen cities. The award for Kaliningrad went to me.

The list of the other fine people is below:

Inside there was a lively evening and lively conversation. I managed to chat and get acquainted with many people, although as far as I could tell most of them have known each other for ages anyway 😁

Three short conclusions about what this evening meant not only for the sixteen people in the room, but for the country's whole football media space.

First. For the first time the league singled out local writers.

Not the big sites, not the famous commentators, not the people who are always in view anyway. But small channels about their own club, regional blogs, personal projects that have been writing away in their corner for years and often have no idea who even sees them.

Now that layer has been named out loud. It isn't a full turn yet, more a first step. But in stories like this the first step always weighs more than the second.

Second. The media evening on 6 July and the big ceremony on 9 July showed a simple thing: football on the pitch and football in text still live at different rhythms.

The distance between them is still large. But the fact that the media part was given its own day I see as a movement towards, not away.

Third. In the work itself nothing will change.

Each of these sixteen writers will go home, open the laptop and sit down again to a text about their club. Just as they did before. In the evening, at night, after the match, after work, after yet another "who even needs all this".

But now that work has a point it can return to.

One room in Moscow. Sixteen people. An award with the name of your city on it.

And if right now in Voronezh, Grozny, Nizhny or any other city someone is running a small channel about their club and doesn't understand what it's all for, let them know: next year it could be them standing in that spot.

And now, back to the usual — tactics, matches, analysis, Baltika 😎

PS - Thank you to Tribuna for giving me the chance to write!

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