By News writing
Published on 26 Mar 21 à 14:29
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While theFrench team of football moves to Kazakhstan, Sunday March 28, 2021, for its second qualifying match at the World-2022, this country of the former USSR is illustrated in another discipline: the futsal.
Private investment and an influx of Brazilian players have enabled this sport to find particularly favorable soil in this Central Asian country.
7e world rank in futsal, 122e football
“It is one of the flagship nations, they are at the 7e world place “, Sixteen ranks ahead of France, and in the future” they could very well be champions of Europe or even of the world “, explains Pierre Jacky, coach of the Blues of futsal.
Their best club, Kaïrat Almaty, raised twice the Champions League and won the Intercontinental Cup in 2014… Results beyond compare with “great football”, its nickname in the region, which sees Kazakhstan peaking at 122e rang Fifa.
In futsal, the Kazakh selection has not always shone, however. His first World Cup, in 2000 in Guatemala, opened with a 12-1 slap against the Brazilian defending champion and closed without a win.
Ermek Toursounov especially remembers the interference of politicians, in particular the president of the Football Federation Rakhat Aliev, then the son-in-law of the head of state Nursultan Nazarbaïev.
“They changed the staff, made us take some players, leave others at home. We went to a World Cup with a team that had barely played together, ”said the 59-year-old former player, who became a filmmaker.
Aliev’s reign over the Federation ended at the end of the 2000s when a conflict with his stepfather forced him into exile. Accused of murders by the Kazakh authorities, he committed suicide in 2015 in the Austrian prison where he was awaiting his extradition.
–Thank you Brazil
It was ultimately the country that inflicted humiliation on Kazakhstan, which then enabled it to progress.
Kazakhstan coach Paulo Ricardo Kaka is Brazilian, like his predecessor Cacau. And the team includes a good part of naturalized Brazilians, including a few stars.
Leo Higuita, known for his kicking game and elected three times goalkeeper of the year at the Futsal Planet Awards, and striker Douglas Junior, mainly, are “two references, two great men of futsal”, confirms Djamel Haroun, goalkeeper and captain of the Blues in futsal.
Both arrived in Kazakhstan thanks to Kairat Orazbekov, a wealthy businessman who founded AFC Kairat in the country’s largest city Almaty, regularly sending his recruiters to South America to find nuggets.
“We took care of our Brazilian talents here in Almaty. In Brazil, nobody knew them and now the whole world knows them, ”he says.
Their integration and innovative training – Orazbekov claims to have been the first to involve the goalkeeper in the futsal game – have fueled “very strong growth” of local players, he said.
“Even if they used naturalization to be able to take center stage and win titles, they allowed a lot of Kazakhs to pass a level, to be trained in sport on futsal,” acknowledges Haroun.
–Bright future
As a result, AFC Kaïrat has become the bête noire of FC Barcelona, beaten several times by the Kazakhs. The last time was in 2019 in the semi-finals of the Champions League in the Almaty Arena, in front of 12,000 supporters.
The most capped player and captain of the selection, Dinmoukhambet Souleïmenov has experienced almost all the outstanding episodes of national futsal.
The turning point was a victory in 2015 over the Portuguese giants in a qualifying match for the 2016 World Cup, assures the one who now coaches FC Kaspi, in the west of the country. “We felt this kind of accumulation of strength: now we can do it,” recalls the 39-year-old ex-player.
And the future looks bright, a futsal culture seems to have taken hold of a country where most schools now have their own land, according to Kairat Orazbekov.
Football cannot say the same. If the national team has with the Astana Arena – where the French team will play on Sunday – a very beautiful setting, the infrastructure is lacking.
“If Slovakia has 1,200 pitches and Belgium three times as much, we have 50 at best. You cannot box without a ring, you cannot play football without pitches ”, regrets the businessman.
Source: © 2021 AFP
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