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Kazakhstan v England – World Cup Qualifier

Central Stadium, Almaty

Saturday 6 June 2009, 21:00 K.O. (local time)

From the day the draw was made for the World Cup Qualifying campaign, this was the one I’d been looking forward to. It’s not every day you get the opportunity to travel to within a hundred mile or so of China to watch your national team play in a country you’ve only heard of due to a fictional character.

As you can imagine, reaching Almaty is not quite as straight forward as heading off to Barcelona and so it ended up with everyone making their own arrangements based upon the cheapest option at the time each of us was ready to book. Mark and Neil were able to make a week of it so went on direct flights from London. I ended up going via Istanbul so I could do Thursday to Monday, whilst I’d arranged that I’d stay with Jazz (Sheff United), Matt (Scunthorpe), Sean (Man City) and Alan (Oldham) and that we’d all meet up at Almaty airport as our flights were all arriving within an hour of each other.

Unbelievably, two days prior to departure, Alan somehow managed to completely do his back in, so missing out on the big adventure. I really felt for him. I’d have been gutted to have missed it, especially at such late notice. I can’t imagine that reading all about it will make him feel much better but no doubt he’ll be with us on the next trip.

So, after a journey that has started at Manchester airport at 9am on the Thursday, I arrived at Almaty airport shortly before 7am on the Friday. Sean was waiting, and gloating about his KLM flight compared with my ‘Turkish Airways’ experience and eventually the Air Baltic flight from Riga arrived carrying Jazz and Matt as well as the other England fans who had actually been allowed to travel following the excesses of a ten hour stop over in Riga!

Despite all the taxi-drivers clambering for custom, we’d decided that we were going to do it properly so we walked out of the airport and headed for the nearest bus stop. Along the way, we passed a man who recognised us as English (not difficult as most of us had shirts on). “You support Manchester United?” he asked. In no uncertain terms, he was given a negative. He decided to have another go. “Barnsley?” Why on earth would anyone’s second guess be Barnsley? We knew we’d made the right decision with the bus when the conductor asked us for our 25p each. We knew we’d made the wrong decision when we arrived in Almaty without a clue of where to get off. We took a gamble and were soon completely lost.

Nobody spoke any English but eventually we stumbled across a small corner shop where the owner was able to kind of understand us via much finger pointing. He took us upstairs to a bar of sorts. I say ‘of sorts’ as it didn’t seem to have any drinks other than a carton of orange juice in the fridge. We tucked into the funny tasting substance while they looked puzzled at why we wanted to pay them for it. After he rung his friend to take us to our hotel, he disappeared only to return with his son. He’d brought him up just so that he could shake hands with these strange English people who had turned up. I suspect they had never met a Westerner before as it turned out we were some way off the beaten track.

When the ‘taxi driver’ arrived we all piled in his very small car, along with another lad who’d made the mistake of following us to the bus stop. We asked how much but he said he would just take us. After eventually finding the other guy’ hotel and much later, finding our hotel, he tried to charge us $50. We eventually agreed to give him 3000 Tenge (about £12) and were so pleased that we’d been crafty enough not to pay the 2000 Tenge it would have cost us for a taxi from the airport.

After a couple of hours kip, we managed to get lost again between picking our tickets up and arriving at the Hotel Astana, literally a five minute walk away along one road. I’m taking a better map reader next time. The Astana was the meeting point for a trip we’d booked up to the mountains and this was where we managed to meet up with Neil and Mark for the first time. They told us about their trip to a local school to meet the kids but you can read all about that and their appearance on the front page of Kazakhstan’s national newspaper in a separate report when Mark gets back to the UK.

We started to realise on this trip, just how little tourism there is in Kazakhstan. We were given an itinerary for the evening but that soon went out of the window. We were driven to the world’s largest speed skating arena next to a huge dam and told that the dam had approximately 850 steps. Then the guide dropped the bombshell. “Ok, you climb to top of dam now”. Well, I don’t know how I did it as I am certainly not the fittest, but I did. It probably took me the best part of 45 minutes but I made it to the top. It was well worth it for the sense of achievement and the great views. It seemed rude not to take a quick photo of the flag up there as evidence.

After we’d all trudged back down again, via the stall selling beer, we were taken to a Yurt which is a traditional restaurant in a tent. There were only two problems with this. They had very little beer and very little food. Not ideal for a hundred or so English football supporters.

Matt and I were up early on the Saturday to attend the memorial service that had been arranged for the 65th anniversary of D-Day. Luckily we’d started to master the art of Kazakh taxis and so made our way to the war memorial with ease.

I’ve never done any of the organised fans stuff before and didn’t really know what to expect but I must say that it was really good. There were probably the best part of a hundred England fans turned up along with Trevor Brooking, Lord Treasman and Gordon Taylor. All three were happy to walk round talking to the fans which was a simple gesture but well received.

The ceremony itself was very moving and it was fascinating to learn that over six hundred thousand Kazakhs has perished in the Second World War. The memorial is in memory of a battalion who tried to defend Moscow against the Nazis with nothing more than hand grenades. One look at the sculpture honouring them showed that these were not soldiers to be messed with.

Following the service, we were treated to a performance by the Kazakh military band. I’ve never seen anything like it. Presumably, it was a case of “What English/American songs do we know lads”. “I’m getting married in the morning” was followed by “The Bare Necessities” and a rendition of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” that had to be seen to be believed. This was not, as Matt pointed out, what they’ll be getting at the service in Whitehall.

You can see the video by clicking here

After a spot of sightseeing and a couple of drinks, we headed to the fans match that Jazz had somehow managed to volunteer for. It was based at the local army barracks and was a good way to while away the afternoon in the sun without getting hammered. Sean and Jazz each managed a half (not lager) and played very well although it would be unfair not to give Jazz his dues and say “what a pass!”, and I hope Sean starting to get his breath back now.

The Chester pub provided the opportunity to cool down after an afternoon in the heat before we headed back to the hotel so that our new sporting heroes could shower and change. While they were doing whatever they needed to do we headed to the bar where we met Anders, a Swedish guy on business in Almaty who Matt managed to make an immediate impression on. “So, you’re Swedish. Do you play all your home games in Oslo?” It’s a good job I don’t go away with these guys for their intellect. He had a great sense of humour though and got us in the mood for the world cup by telling us about his five day trip to Johannesburg where he was mugged twice and beaten up, all in separate incidents!!

Our taxi to the ground (two quid – we were really getting the hang of this now) dropped us by the home entrance, meaning we needed to walk half way round the ground. After what had happened outside the ground in Seville, this could have been a daunting prospect but things couldn’t have been much different. It took us about 45 minutes to walk round because we must have had to stop a good twenty times to have our photos taken with locals. One even thrust his Kazakhstan pennant into my hand telling me it was a present from Kazakhstan. It was probably the most surreal three quarters of an hour of my life. If that’s what it’s like to be a celebrity, I might book myself on the next series of Big Brother.

As Sean and I forged on ahead, we passed the Kazakhstan team coach pulling into the stadium. The coach we’d gone up to the mountains on was a real rust heap, and this wasn’t much better. Matt and Jazz were a few yards behind us and hung on as the players got off. Behind the coach was a VW Golf and someone in a Kazakhstan tracksuit got out. Matt asked for a photo with him and the guy explained that he needed to be quick because he’d missed the coach and his girlfriend had brought him. They assumed he must be a squad player or something but half an hour later we saw him run out as Kazakhstan’s centre forward.

I asked two guys in the England section to hold the flag while I took the customary photo and one joked that he wouldn’t hold an Oldham flag. When I unfurled it, he was quite taken aback. “I went to school with Ernie” he told me. It really is a small world, and how many times have I said that during the season? The other man added “You were on the front page of the Jewish Chronicle when this got nicked in Spain”. I’ve no idea whether that’s true or not.

I managed to get the flag up in the ground but our delays outside meant that the best spots had gone. It may have meant that the chances of it appearing on TV were limited, but when I saw Neil heading towards me, I soon found out that there was going to be no shortage of exposure. Neil had the front page of the Kazakhstan Today national newspaper and there on the front page was a picture of him and Mark holding the flag. They had exceeded themselves there.

The game started terribly. We should have been one down inside a minute and when Matt and Jazz’s mate from the VW Golf knocked Kazakhstan ahead, I don’t think anyone could argue that they deserved it. Actually, one person didn’t think they deserved it and that person was the linesman who raised his flag for offside. I haven’t seen a replay but apparently it was the correct decision.

After that, we didn’t play well but we were the better side and after Gareth Barry put us ahead we never looked in any real danger. “Who was the last player to score an international goal before playing a single game for his club,” I mused. It was a throw away line but it’s Luca Modric apparently according to the bloke in front of me at the time.

A sublime chip from Steve Gerrard looked to have doubled the lead but unfortunately it cannoned off the crossbar. It fell to Heskey who had all the time in the world. I suspect he was the only person in the ground who thought it was a foregone conclusion but he was right and we found ourselves two up going into the break.

The second half saw a professional performance. It never looked like becoming an absolute rout but at the same time, the winner was never in doubt. Rooney scored a great goal, forcing the keeper into a fine save before converting the rebound with an overhead kick and it was left to Lampard to wrap up the victory with a penalty. By the laws of the game, the defender who conceded the spot kick should probably have been sent off but I don’t think anyone would have liked to see that.

The Kazakh fans were great. The atmosphere was impressive even when they knew the game had gone and they had some brilliant banners. My favourite came out at half time. It was a picture of Borat (who they find deeply offensive) hanging from a noose with the words “Stereotypes are Dead” underneath. Fair play to them, they were doing a great job of trying to change the attitudes towards them.

The walk back to the pub was further than we could manage so we hailed a car. A well dressed guy in his twenties pulled over in a lovely car and we climbed into the back. He and his wife took us to the bar and we tried to pay them. They were having none of it though. They didn’t want money, just some photos with us. We covered their car with our flags and posed for photos. He had no camera so we took the pictures and wrote down his email address so we could send them on. That was just the kind of trip this was.

A heavy night finished with me staying up with Sean who had a 5am taxi to take him to the airport while Matt and Jazz retired at the ridiculously early time of about half four. Five minutes later they were back. A little tomfoolery in the lift had ended with our room key and the attached safe key ending up at the bottom of the lift-shaft.

We were quite limited as to what we could do on Sunday morning... We sat in our room and watched as a man who was apparently ‘an expert’ drilled into our safe for an hour until he had done enough damage that we could get our passports out. Did I mention earlier that it’s a good job I don’t go away with these guys for their intellect?

Sunday evening was spent watching Kazakhstan U21 play Montenegro U21 in an international friendly. There can’t be too many people who can claim to have done that. We expected there to be half a dozen folk there but there must have been ten to fifteen thousand. They really do love their football. Unfortunately they couldn’t muster a goal and lost 2-0.

What little time there was left was spent in Ultras bar near the ground. An excellent pub with good food and beer. We met a group of Kazakh lads who had set up the local Liverpool supporters group. Now, they knew more about English football than I do (ok, that’s not hard), and not just the Premier League. When one of our group said he supported Darlington, one immediately said “League 2, points deducted”. When I mentioned Oldham (and I didn’t have the flag with me), the same local said, “Ernie Cooksey, cancer”!

Unfortunately I had a flight to catch so couldn’t stay long but I believe that the English lads were not allowed to pay for anything all night and were then all taken back to their hotels by the one Kazakh guy who wasn’t drinking. What a trip and what amazing people.