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Kazakhstan v Scotland
Thursday 21 March 2019
Astana / Nursultan
Kazakhstan inflicted an incredible 3-0 defeat on Scotland in their opening Euro 2020 qualifier, having only won four of their previous 37 home matches.
The hosts opened the scoring very early on with a goal by Yuriy Pertsukh after only six minutes. They then doubled their lead just four minutes later with a goal from Yan Vorogovskiy. The team ranked 117 in the world were worthy leaders going into the break 2-0 up against Scotland.
It all went from bad to worse for Scotland after they came out in the 2nd half with Kazakhstan going further ahead in the 50th minute with a goal from Baktiyar Zainutdinov. Scotland offered little in the way of chances in the remaining 40 minutes of the match and Kazakhstan recorded a well-deserved 3-0 victory for their new Czech manager Michal Bílek.
It was tough to take for the 500 or so Scotland fans who had made the 6,000 mile round trip across 6 time zones and braved the -15 degree wintery conditions to visit the World’s second coldest capital city. Fortunately for them the match was played in a stadium with the roof closed, so the actual temperature during the match was closer to positive double digit figures rather than the double digit negative ones outside.
Even after only one match from ten qualifiers, Scotland are now perhaps already going to have to resign themselves on relying on the play-off place to qualify for Euro 2020 that they have already secured from topping their Euro Nations League against Israel and Albania last year.
Meanwhile Kazakhstan can look forward to a local home derby international against neighbours and former rulers Russia on Sunday in their next qualifying match with renewed confidence. It has been 29 years since Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union back in 1991 and still even today 20% of the population of the 9th largest country in the world come from Russia.
The win came on the public holiday of Nauryz, which is the Kazakh New Year – what a great start to the new year for their football team! Further new beginnings for the country happened this week when Kazakhstan renamed their capital city yesterday from Astana to Nursultan in honour of their first and only president Nursultan Nazarbayev who announced his retirement on Tuesday after 29 years in charge of the country.
