With nine months to go before Baku hosts the Eurovision pop-music competition, transparency concerns are arising about Azerbaijani government expenditures on the event.
These are difficult times for football-crazy Turkey, where a match-fixing scandal is riling fans. Some observers suggest, however, the continuing investigation could mark an important victory for civil society.
The afternoon training session for Kazakhstan’s Olympic weightlifting team is noisy business. Every few seconds, it seems, one of the team lets a 100-kilogram barbell drop to the floor and the room rings with a shuddering clang.
There was a day not too long ago that the Uzbek owner of FC Bunyodkor in Tashkent entertained notions of turning the club into a regional powerhouse, a sort of Manchester United, Barcelona or Inter-Milan of Central Asia. The team brought in a high profile coach, began construction on a new 35,000-seat stadium and signed some past-their-prime stars in an attempt to gain instant name recognition.
As 2010 draws to a close and Kazakhstan’s chairmanship of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) winds down, the country is shifting the focus of its image-shaping efforts from politics to sports. The country’s next big project – hosting the seventh Asian Winter Games -- will run from January 30 to February 6.
Soccer in Azerbaijan has caught the fancy of some of the country’s leading corporations, which are spending tens of millions of dollars to upgrade facilities and sign high-profile coaches and players from around the world.
Fraught with financial uncertainty and yet led by wealthy elites, Kyrgyzstan’s football teams and tournaments provide a window into the country’s political and social struggles.
While the rest of Georgia celebrated Easter on April 4 at home around the dinner table, one village in western Georgia marked the day with a rugby-like scramble that effectively blocked traffic for hours on the country's East-West national highway.
