Aleksandr Ivankov

Ivankov's route to the Russian Premier League ran through four second- and third-tier clubs before he found a settled home. He started at Zorky Krasnogorsk, made his senior debut there in 2019 and had gathered 19 appearances and two goals by the time he moved on. Spells at Ural-2 and Metallurg Lipetsk followed, and at Lipetsk his own dressing room voted him one of the club's three best players even as the team was relegated from the First League.

A season at SKA-Khabarovsk produced two goals, including one against Arsenal Tula and another on his debut against Shinnik, and by the summer of 2023 Torpedo Moscow were ready to pay for him for a fee of around €110,000. He has since made 62 league appearances for the Moscow club, plus four in the cup, scoring four goals and setting up three more.

The 2024/25 season marked the high point so far: Torpedo finished as First League runners-up and won promotion to the Russian Premier League, with Ivankov taking the captain's armband that September. Off the pitch, he made headlines of a different kind in August 2024, proposing to his girlfriend Ekaterina on the pitch at Luzhniki Stadium after Torpedo's win over Neftekhimik.

Before any of that, Ivankov came through the youth ranks at Zenit Saint Petersburg and then Dynamo Moscow, winning the Moscow region title with Dynamo's youth side in 2017. He also represented Russia at Under-16 and Under-17 level, taking silver at the Valentin Ivanov Memorial and the UEFA Development Tournament, and bronze at the BRICS International Tournament.