Twenty-year-old Issac Nyengue, a defender from Cameroon, a football hotbed in Africa, was looking for a little payday and a chance to gain valuable experience in what he thought was a professional European league. So he seized on an opportunity to go the South Caucasus country of Georgia, which aspires to host the 2020 European Football Championships.
Officials in Uzbekistan are trying to reap some positive PR from the Central Asian nation’s recent successes on the football pitch. Yet, while the government lauds athletic achievements, critics say Tashkent’s top-down approach to sports exposes some of the country’s broader problems, including corruption.
It’s not uncommon for football fans to get emotional about the outcome of a match. But in Tajikistan, an authoritarian-minded country where public protests are rare, a recent wave of post-game rioting has exposed anger over more than just a final score.
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.
