SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Aisultan Nazarbayev, grandson of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, has said he wants to be head of Kazakhstan’s football association. Mr Nazarbayev is already head of the club that owns FC Astana which has qualified for the UEFA Champions League.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, AUG. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — FC Astana, the quasi Kazakh government football project, may have qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time but not everybody was celebrating.
Football fans in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital, noted FC Astana’s success in beating Apoel Nicosia 2-1 over two legs in a qualifying round for Europe’s top football competition, but only grudgingly.
Azimat, 27, was taking a lunch-break from his job selling French wine at a shop in central Almaty. It was one of those graceful late summer days in Almaty. Snow-capped mountains in the background glinted bright in the sun; tree-lined streets provided a natural, fresh canopy for pedestrians. The day had a laid-back — louche, even — feel about it.
“This is definitely Kazakhstan’s glory,” Azimat said of FC Astana’s unexpected victory. “But, they are celebrating in Astana and not down here.” He smiled, proudly. “We are Almaty.”
People in Almaty are used to Astana’s status as the loud, brash newcomer usurping their beloved city. Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev has treated Astana as his pet project, building grandiose government ministries and replicas of some of Europe’s most famous monuments such as the Arc de Triomphe. He made it his capital in 1997, wary of Almaty’s reputation for dissent. Since then he has poured billions into constructing the city of his dreams and shifted business and government agencies north to Astana. The Central Bank will be the last major government agency to move to Astana from Almaty when it shifts its office at the end of 2016.
Much like the city, FC Astana is a new football team. It was established in 2009, wears the national colours and is sponsored by Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund. It has been created to succeed.
Almaty’s team Kairat was the football powerhouse in Kazakhstan but has been firmly superseded by FC Astana and its stars. A few hours after Azimat espoused on FC Astana’s success, Kairat was playing France’s Bordeaux in a qualifying match for Europe’s second tier UEFA Europa League. It won the match but still lost the two-leg tie. Once again, Almaty residents will have to look on as Astana carries the Kazakh flag, searching for more glory.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – FC Astana became the first Kazakh football team to qualify for the group stages of the UEFA Champions League by beating the more fancied Apoel Nicosia 2-1 on aggregate during a two-leg qualifying match. FC Astana scored with 6 minutes remaining of normal time in the second match in Nicosia.
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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
AUG. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Barcelona beat fellow Spanish side Sevilla 5-4 in the final of the UEFA Super Cup in Tbilisi, arguably the most high profile game of football played in post-Soviet Georgia. Former president Mikheil Saakashvili had organised for the match to be played in Tbilisi, part of his drive to promote the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 243, published on Aug. 14 2015)
JULY 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Beijing beat Almaty in the race to host the 2022 Winter Olympics at a vote at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Kuala Lumpur. Almaty had been looking to become the only city in the former Soviet Union outside Russia to host an Olympic Games. President Nursultan Nazarbayev wants to burnish his image as the father-of-the-nation by hosting a major sporting event.
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(News report from Issue No. 242, published on Aug. 7 2015)
JULY 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a report entitled “‘That’s When I Realized I Was Nobody’: A Climate of Fear for LGBT People in Kazakhstan”, Human Rights Watch said that homophobia in Kazakhstan was rife. Almaty is bidding to host the Winter Olympics in 2022. The HRW report was released on the eve of the IOC decision on who to award the Games to.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia began gearing up to host the European Youth Olympic Festival in Tbilisi between July 26 and Aug. 1, one of the biggest sporting events it has hosted. Around 3,500 young athletes will compete for medals in a number of sports.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
TBILISI/Georgia, JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Football dominates conversation on the streets of Tbilisi. Its 51,000-seat Dinamo stadium will host the 40th UEFA Super Cup between Champions League winner Barcelona and Europa League winner Sevilla on August 11.
Tbilisi won the bid to host the Super Cup in the last few months of Mikheil Saakashvili’s government in 2012, the culmination of 1-1/2 years of negotiations.
“It’s a huge event for us,” said Boris Kiknadze, one of several thousand football fans in Tbilisi who are hoping to buy tickets for the big match. “Our teams are not great, so we never have big stars coming here. I am really excited to see Barcelona, if I manage to get a ticket.”
But that’s just the problem. Getting hold of a ticket has proved difficult, if not impossible. “It is a horrible mess here,” said Kiknadze. Biletebi.ge, an online ticket retailer, was selected as the main distributor of the game tickets. Used to selling tickets to jazz concerts and the theatre, rather than large sports events, it crashed seconds after thousands of fans tried to buy a ticket on June 22.
It restarted on June 30, introduced a virtual queue and allowed people 15 minutes on the website before timing out and four tickets per person. An estimated 140,000 people queued online for tickets. About 2,000 tickets were sold before the site crashed again.
Biletebi.ge said it experienced technical difficulties, and resumed sales on July 1 of the 4,300 tickets earmarked for people living outside Georgia. The remaining 22,000 tickets, reserved for Georgians, will be sold later this month at booths outside the stadium.
Tbilisi-based sports journalist Alastair Watt described what the match meant to Georgians.
“This is probably the biggest club match to take place in Georgia since independence (from the Soviet Union in 1991),” he said. “For the tens of thousands of Georgians who follow Barcelona, this is likely to be their only chance to see their team on Georgian soil.”
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JUNE 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan brought the inaugural European Games to a close with another lavish ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in Baku.
Opinion was divided on whether the Games had been a success.
Attendance of both crowds and top athletes was low, espe- cially in the perceived blue ribbon athletics events although Azerbaijan’s new sta- diums were highly praised.
For Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, the Games were an intrinsic part of his strategy to promote the country through sport.
Azerbaijan has sponsored football teams and plans to host a Formula 1 race next year. It will probably also bid to host the Olympics in 2024.
No expense was spared on the European Games, which featured Lady Gaga singing at the opening ceremony.
But complaints over Azerbaijan’s human rights record and a bus crash in the Olympic village which injured members of the Austrian swimming team overshadowed part the Games.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JUNE 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Olympic Committee striped Chaltu Beji, an 18- year-old Ethiopia-born athlete competing for Azerbaijan, of victory in the 3,000m steeple-chase at the European Games after she failed a drugs test. The failed drugs test will embarrass Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
