The first thing that strikes you about Kyrgyzstan’s post-Soviet capital, Bishkek, are the mountains. The most glorious range of snow-draped peaks jut straight out of the Central Asian prairies, and stand in incredible contrast with the man-made structures below.
With its countless half-finished low-rises, it’s hard for a visitor to tell if Bishkek is a city under construction or one in decay. Its national stadium certainly has the feel of the latter. If not for the mountains which form one of the most scenic backdrops in world football, this could be a ground from Karl-Marx-Stadt, or the suburbs of East Berlin that has long fallen from favour.
There’s junk in all corners, mingled with weeds. Bucket seats in its small, uncovered stands are spattered with paint drippings, caked with dirt or busted apart. Just three days out from Kyrgyzstan’s first home qualifier for the next World Cup, and the running track which surrounds the pitch was as busy as you’d expect for a sunny Saturday morning. There was nothing to stop anyone from trampling all over the field, which is pockmarked enough as it is. Where the divots have gotten too much, they were overflowing with heaping mounds of replacement turf.
“The pitch is more fit for grazing than football, so tiki taka may be out the question,” says David McArdle, a Glaswegian ex-pat who writes about the game in Central Asian for Futbolgrad.
This stadium only recently had floodlights installed, and tonight’s qualifier against Australia is the first time they’ll be used for real. Poor visibility has been flagged as an issue, and there is reportedly the potential for blackouts.
But for all this, the Socceroos’ maiden voyage to one of the even-lesser-known ‘Stans is proving to be far from the logistical nightmare some had forecast.
Their team manager, Joel Freeme, first travelled to Bishkek months ago and has found the local FA accommodating, the stadium adequate and their hotel up to scratch. “It’s been like any other international away from home,” Freeme says of the preparations for this trip. “Obviously the surroundings are a bit different, but it’s just another experience in Asia for us.
“You’ve got the support of your embassy and the local federation, they’re going to look after us because they know we’re going to look after them on the return leg. We came here on a charter, so we dictate our own flight times, just to allow the players to have the best preparation.”
The Australians landed here in Bishkek on Sunday evening. With its ubiquitous Cyrillic scripts and the occasional tributes to the great heroes of the Soviet past, it’s a fitting spot to begin the journey towards Russia 2018.
They will spend only two nights here before kick-off, and should find the weather agreeable, the atmosphere relaxed and the streets leafy (though poorly maintained). Locals are friendly, and apparently quite excited to be hosting the newly-crowned Asian champions. An advance party - comprising a security officer, an operations expert and a chef - was dispatched ahead of the team to ensure a smooth arrival. And so far, so good.
Most Australians confuse Kyrgyzstan with the country of ‘Borat’, and even after months of preparation and reconnaissance missions, the national team is very much an unknown quantity to the visiting side. “We’re going against an opposition we have never faced, a place we have never been to,” said captain Mile Jedinak at last week’s training camp in Dubai. “That comes with its own obstacles.”
Kyrgyzstan have only won three games in the past two years, though to be fair, they haven’t played a lot. Until last week, when they began their own qualifiers in Bangladesh, they hadn’t been involved in any Fifa-recognised matches for close to a year.
The only matches they’d previously had under coach Alexander Krestinin were a pair of friendlies in China last year, and Australia’s technical staff having been wearing their tapes of those games thin, trying to get an insight into what this team is all about.
Like Australia, the Kyrgyzstanis have been training in the UAE, though their paths did not cross. Australia did, however, send a scout to Dhaka to watch their win over Bangladesh, and he began debriefing the team on Friday night.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” says striker Tim Cahill. “We’ve been well prepped. So it’s down to us...(and) if you start off well in these groups, it can set a tone for the rest of it.”
While he expects the home team to park the bus, he is wary of their playmakers. “They don’t play sideways, those two, they like to thread the balls through, and create problems.”
The absence of game time explains Kyrgyzstan’s fall down the rankings since these qualifiers were announced. That said, Kyrgyzstan has typically been the lowest-ranked team of this group, despite their higher seeding. It makes last week’s big win in Bangladesh somewhat intriguing. Has Krestinin unlocked the potential in this group?
One of the rare videos of this side that is available might cause a few jitters in the Socceroos’ camp. It shows just what defender Azamat Baimatov can do at set pieces and from long-range.
Baimatov, like the majority of his national team-mates, plays in the local league with perennial champions Dordoi Bishkek. But Kyrgyzstan has almost as many players based in Europe as Australia does.
It might be a little unfair to include players from way down in Germany’s regional leagues in that list, though one of them - Sergej Evljuskin - has previously spent considerable time on Wolfsburg’s books.
And there’s also a pair of up-and-coming 20-year-olds. Akhlidin Israilov is in Dynamo Kiev’s reserves, while Valeriy Kichin is signed to the Russian team, Anzhi Makhachkala, whose honour boards include names like Samuel Eto’o, Roberto Carlos, Willian and coach Guus Hiddink.
That said, Australia has a population four times that of Kyrgyzstan’s, and a per-head GDP more than 50 times as big. Even the significantly larger and economically stronger neighbour of Kazakhstan was no match at home against England a few years back.
With so much at stake, so few genuine obstacles, and a good hundred points in the Fifa rankings between them, there should be no excuses for Australia not winning tonight, and comfortably. Unlike previous trips to Uruguay, where home supporters made a racket outside the team hotel all night, the visitors should even be able to get a good night’s sleep.
“The only way that we can lose this game is our own performance,” says Cahill. “We need to attack this game like (we) did against Germany.”
McArdle says the biggest issue could be faced by the small number of away fans that have made the journey here - some from Pakistan, Kazakhstan or back home. “There has been a notice made that there will be a heavy increase in police presence for the game. In any other context, it may make you feel safer. Unfortunately in Bishkek, the police are the biggest threat to any foreigner living here. They bribe for breakfast.” It’s normally worth a fiver, he says.
“Soviet bureaucracy still rules supreme, buying a loaf of bread still may require it being measured.
“But all-in-all, it’s pretty ok.”
