London is Blue Dispatch #074

During a feast of Beshbarmak (Kazakhstan’s national dish featuring horse sausage & smoked horse meat over noodles) & an assorted platter of Kazakh bread, I saw one of my Norwegian Chelsea friends staring into the distance at a striking art installation on the opposite wall. Syrym, our server for the evening, took us close to it – a surface mounted on the wall. 12 riders mounted on horses arranged in concentric circles, surrounding a glass cavity with a goat figurine embedded inside it.

Kokpar, explains our server, is an equestrian game his Kazakh ancestors played to prepare for war. 12 riders compete against each other to try and steal a goat’s carcass from the center. The game requires great skill, a measure of deceit and cunning and exceptional agility. The server then asks Anders, another Norwegian friend, to touch the glass orifice. Anders extends his finger to touch it, but his finger goes past where he believes the surface of the glass is, revealing that the goat is embedded a few inches deeper, in a cavity resembling a kaleidoscope.

This is the toughest part of the game, says Syrym – some riders believe the goat is just within reach and go all in too early. The rider who wins understands that the prize lies deeper than where it seems.

Outside, the air is razor sharp. It singes the skin like a rug burn, making you lick your lips to smoothen the cracks. The Astana players are put through drills, steam rising from their warm bodies under the floodlights. The surface is surprisingly not astroturf. The grass is pockmarked by stud-marks and ice crystals hang precariously to the blades, glistening under the floodlights. Whoever tames the elements better will probably have a decent advantage in the game.

The city of Almaty is hauntingly beautiful in winters. Glacial streams flow right beside its narrow streets, snow crunches softly beneath the feet of toddlers stomping down piles of snow. The Kazakhs are generous with their time. In the Green Bazaar, a massive farmer’s market, Noor, a Turkish lady, asks me where I’m from as she slices off a luscious amount of goat’s milk cheese and pats it onto my palm with a smile. I want to tell her I’m lactose intolerant, but I do not know the Kazakh or the Russian words for it. But the cheese is exquisite, so I buy a kilo. It dissolves into a salty-sweet mess on my tongue. A sweet, elderly Kazakh lady gushes to me for 15 minutes about Raj Kapoor and Bollywood. The ladies selling cheese muffle laughter as they see me struggle to keep up.

Not many Kazakh fans I’ve talked to envision an upset, even with a heavily rotated side in brutal weather conditions. But the mood from Astana is buoyant anyway. Not many would have envisioned Chelsea coming to Kazakhstan.

I walk into the media room of FC Astana’s press conference, grateful to escape the -16 chill. The room inside Almaty’s Central Stadium is tiny, but there are about 20 Kazakh journalists crammed inside the room, anxiously waiting. “Is Mudryk coming?” ask quite a few. Many are disappointed to know he won’t be traveling, one remarks he’d be quite at home in the cold.

Grigoriy Babayan, Astana’s manager, enters, and quite a few people in the room rise. I’ve never seen it happen in press conferences in Europe, but in most of Asia this is custom. Babayan answers a few questions about tactics, about the approach when it comes to taking on Chelsea. I ask him if with a goalkeeper who made 13 saves in a game, and the stingiest defence in the league, he’ll look to prioritize being compact against a rotated Chelsea side. Babayan says it would be unwise to focus just on one phase against Chelsea; even with the rotated team they will be aware of the quality. He stresses though that playing Atletico and Manchester United in European competitions has given them vital experience.

There are fans of a few different Kazakh PL teams in the room. They all seem to want Astana to do well – a sentiment that may not be well appreciated by fans in the more football-devout regions in the world. But perhaps the goal here is also deeper than it seems, like Kokpak. There are many fans that question the wisdom of an away day in a country on the other side of the world, against a club not considered a traditional powerhouse in Europe. To my pleasant surprise, every Chelsea fan I’ve met in Astana, whether they’ve traveled 8 hours or 22, is delighted to be here, to experience the richness of a nation that the brutal Champions League qualifiers usually root out early.

The room does not ask about Astana’s difficulties in the Conference League. In fact, when Babayan finishes, the room breaks into applause. It is evident that this is not just Astana vs Chelsea; this is Kazakhstan vs Chelsea. And there is hope that Kazakhstan can send a message to UEFA – we do matter.

 Note: A big thanks to Knut and the Chelsea Supporter’s Group in Norway for an unforgettable trip. FC Astana and Almaty brought a lot of warmth in the cold too!