Once upon a time, the Belarusian club were presented as the best thing since sliced bread, or Norway’s Rosenborg. An underdog capable of going toe-to-toe with top European clubs and seemingly able to balance the books.
But the epic rise of BATE Borisov was followed by an equally epic collapse, though they are on the brink of a return to the top table having just won their first silverware in five years.
Rise and fall
Back-to-back promotions in 1996/97 saw the Minsk region team hit the Belarusian top flight, where they then finished second and first, in the following two seasons. There would ‘only’ be one more league title in the following six campaigns, before it clicked. They did, as is now known in Belarus, the ‘unlucky 13-in-a-row’ from 2006 to 2018. When I first reported on them for BPF, mid-pomp, there were worries about the club’s stability and future, the next time, it was game over.
Last season, I got to cover a few of their games and went behind the scenes while shooting a sports series, and spoke with club officials. Their ‘new’ stadium remains one of the most futuristic and impressive I’ve ever visited. Great views from everywhere, lovely grounds, yet this year they played their ‘home’ cup game at the Energetik Stadium in Minsk. Having invested tens of millions into a superb stadium and training base, they didn’t include an all-weather ground for springtime, when most natural grass surfaces in Belarus are unplayable.
That they were playing near neighbours Torpedo-Belaz Zhodino, who also don’t have a reserve stadium capable of hosting matches in spring, is a definite knock on both clubs. A week previous, Torpedo, perennial cup pretenders, had to host BATE at the tidy Dinamo-Yuni Stadium in Minsk. ‘Yuni’ is the home of Dinamo Minsk’s reserve and women’s teams. It’s far from the top tier.
Back to BATE, after three runners-up spots, last year the club sank to 10th place in the table and looked like being relegated at one point. Losing at home to the relegated and terribly inadequate Molodechno was. The newly promoted side, also from the Minsk region, were woefully poor. Interestingly, the team who came up with them, ML (Maxline) Vitebsk, went on to win the Premier League. Maxline, a betting company, owns the club and avoids the regulations for maximum player payments that state-owned/sponsored clubs like BATE, Torpedo, and Dinamo Minsk face. 2025 was one of the weakest domestic seasons in Belarus and only for being marginally less awful than four other clubs, BATE would be back in the second tier with financial, management, and infrastructural issues. And then…
Green buds in Borisov
Last season the club grabbed the impressive, if fragile, Ivorian attacker Yao Jean Charles (aka JC) from Russia’s SKA Khabarovsk. Pacey and skillful with a superb left foot, Charles and youth product Vlad Yatskevich (22) saved them. In the second leg of the cup tie with Torpedo in March, JC scored a screamer from 25 yards that set the club up for a 2-1 aggregate win. As good as the African is, the crop of youngsters from their youth system, who grew up knowing only glory, are a promising supporting cast.
Nikita Neskoromny (20) is a very tidy defender getting more game time as the club don’t have the cash to splash on older players. He rejected trials this off-season with top clubs in Russia, Austria, and Holland. Nikolay Mirsky (20) impressed against Torpedo and will eventually find himself as an attacking midfielder, with the ball control and speed to make an impact anywhere. Midfielder Egor Rusakov (19) is already on the radar of Wisla Krakow and VfB Stuttgart. And these ‘kids’ have brought fans back to the club.
Back to basics
The massive amount of kids following BATE was pointed out by a former colleague at the Torpedo game. Lots of kids, brought up on songs and stories of great deeds at home and abroad. Draws with Juventus in 2008, beating Everton away in 2009 and Roma in 2015, and those 13 championships. The hunger in Borisov is back, off the field as well. And it paid dividends in Saturday’s cup final.
Having won 5 leagues with BATE as a player, Artem Kontsevoy cut his teeth as a youth coach with the club before getting the top job last July. He knows the talent and potential in the pipeline and is keen to develop it. His assistant Vladimir Nevinsky was a player in the early days of BATE’s rise, before becoming part of the club’s coaching staff. Kontsevoy was coached by him and was keen to keep him at the club when he took over.
Another senior coach, Dmitry Likhtarovich, is a former BATE star who won 11 leagues with the club before retiring in 2015. He immediately joined the reserve team coaching staff and was promoted to the first team in 2020. BATE have gone back to basics with their coaching system, using the old ‘Liverpool Boot Room’ method which the late Anatoly Kapski, the club founder and chair, espoused and that BPF was the first outlet to point out in 2012!
Kapsky’s son, Andrey, has finally begun to get to grips with being chairman. Financial worries have been eased by agreeing long term tenancy at the stadium, along with a solid sponsorship deal with a betting company. The latter saw heated debate among club followers, though as one fan leader told me – “Just to keep the first team together and not lose players to Lithuania or Kazakhstan, we need to do such a deal, even with a devil.”
Can’t win with kids
At the game with Torpedo and in the stadium on Saturday, I heard the oft-used Alan Hansen bit about kids not being able to win. As one BATE fan organiser told me:
Too many false starts, corners to turn and moment to be excited. I agree giving young academy players games, but look at Vitebsk [league champs ML], they bring in a famous Jamaican for lots of money, how do we compete with that? With kids!
The Jamaican is Shamar Nicholson (29), the Caribbean island’s sixth top goal scorer and mainstay of the national team. He arrived in Belarus on a loan deal from Mexican club Tijuana, who pay 90% of his salary. Having seen Nicholson in the flesh, with Spartak Moscow, he may have found his level. A big, strong forward, he was routinely embarrassed by solid, unspectacular Russian defenders.
In fairness, he showed little glimpses of promise before the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, but usually was poor.
BATE can’t afford themselves luxuries like expensive imports and are now trying to live within their meagre means. On Saturday they were terrible in the first half against giant Dinamo Minsk, before replaced JC with 19-year-old Kirill Apanasevich. Kirill, who moved from Dinamo last year, ran from half-way to coolly slot home the equaliser. In one of the best halves of football I’ve seen in years, both sides did enough to win, before it went to extra-time and penalties. The ‘Yellow-Blues’ held their nerves to win 8-7 and not one person there begrudged them.
Afterwards, the BATE fan organiser messaged me. She had been furiously posting on Instagram and told me that “this means more than the 13 leagues. We are almost back.”
BATE and Dinamo will begin their UEFA Conference League adventures in the 1st qualifying round, along with Bohemians and Glentoran, though have to play their ‘home’ ties in a neutral venue due to UEFA sanctions. The decision to not ban Belarusian clubs is seen as a ‘win’ for many in the country, though the kids who cheered their heroes to victory on Saturday won’t get to enjoy a ‘European night,’ for now.
And if BATE can keep this current crop together and add in a couple more experienced foreigners like ex-Chelsea player Victorien Angban, in the next two seasons they’ll win the league.