It is normally the case, at least for me, to be stumbling upon great finds almost entirely by chance, and today was exactly one such case. We were sitting on a topchan at the hotel, yet again cheered by endless supplies of tea and sweets, whilst I used Google maps to supplement my hand-drawn map’s deficiencies. Zooming back to include most of Bukhara in the picture, I noticed a new development, evidently included by some Mountain View coder exactly for eventualities such as these: a notification of specific events happening where I was looking. That day, a polite notice in red, hovering above the city’s stadium, said “Buxoro PFC – Pakhtakor 18.00”. We discussed it for a whole minute and then it was settled: we were going to sample Uzbekistan’s top football division.
The hubbub of excitement outside Bukhara’s football stadium, home of the city’s darlings, the Buxoro Professional Football Club, was palpable. The city’s finest were out in force, both the rather plump and jovial boys in green uniform and the lean, muscular and rather more serious members of the Milliy Gvardiya, the black-clad military cops. We were quickly discovering that stadiums in Uzbekistan are much more civilised than they are over in Italy.
Having gotten our two tickets, for a grand total of £1.20, we then approached the turnstiles. Clutching our stubs, we gingerly approached the phalanx of officers standing under menacing notices prohibiting access to people carrying bags, cameras, sticks, bottles and other indecipherable objects. We had one backpack, two cameras, one of which big enough to be used as a small telescope and inconspicuous like a member of the Harlem Globetrotters posing in a photo with a group of chin-strap penguins. Still, we need not have worried, because as soon as the notion of us being tourists spread amongst the guardians of the order, we were waved through amongst excited cheers of “Italia! Toto Cotugno!”. With the least thorough check seen in any major stadium in the world, we were in.
The ring of space between the outer fence and the concrete buttresses of the stadium reminded me of my hometown’s arena where I practiced track & field. Well-kept flowerbeds ran for the entire length of the stadium, completed with small cypresses and other trees. It was a rather gentle surrounding and a far cry from the holding pens and barbed-wire walkways I was more accustomed to see in the medieval fortresses that passed for football arenas over in the Bel Paese.
A photographer in hi-vis was snapping pictures of four lads in blue tracksuits, photo badges hanging from their necks, holding Buxoro scarves between their stretched hands. They must have been the local ultras. We watched them, and they watched us; but, unlike in Italy, where we would most probably be advised to sod off, or be rewarded for our impudence with a Glaswegian kiss, we found ourselves invited to join them in the part of the stands that had been claimed as their own domain. Again, unlike Italy, it was not one of the popular terraces furthest away from the pitch, but it was almost smack-bang on the centreline. These guys had it good.
To say that the arrival of two Italian visitors did not generate a bit of a stir would be a lie. In fact, the magnitude of the surprise we caused could be described by imagining that the Pope and Paul Weller appeared, alone and unannounced, to the North Stand at Stamford Bridge to see Chelsea play on a rainy Wednesday evening. Never before I had been asked to pose for so many selfies, shake so many hands or to explain why Torino FC is better than Juventus (it really is, believe me).
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Whilst we went through the usual pleasantries that precede the beginning of a match – the ultras re-arranging their wares, players and referees pottering about on the pitch, pretty much everyone smoking like chimneys – I could not help but feel a bit nervous about the game. Allow me to explain.
You see, Buxoro PFC is what Italian commentators of the beautiful game liked to define a workmen’s team, a blue-collar group with big hearts and little fear, but also very shortly in supply of good feet. Its natural position, the food chain of the Uzbekistan Super League, was roughly halfway up the table, with far more frequent slips in the bottom than forays in the top half. Pakhtakor, on the other hand, might have meant cotton pickers, but it was clear that a lot of Amu Darya water had flown under the bridges since it was nothing more than an after-work distraction for kolkhoz labourers. Pakhtakor had a shiny new Adidas kit, had won the national title nine times since 2001, played home games in a stadium within spitting distance from the nation’s Senate and could boast, within the first squad, one Portuguese, one Brazilian, one Serbian and an Australian. By the looks of it, the most international experience that Buxoro had to offer was a previous career in purse-snatching across Europe’s train stations for the guy with jersey no. 8, but I could not be sure of that.
Predictably, as the game commenced, it was a tale of two teams: one sandwiched into its own half, and the other descending along the flanks like marauding Huns, throwing balls into the opponent’s penalty box as if they were raining. Only the sacrifice of Buxoro defenders, who used every bodily part allowed by the rules to stop the shots, and Tashkent’s utter incompetence were to thank for the result remaining on a goalless draw.
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Buxoro’s responses were valiant, but their modus operandi – which the same Italian commentators quoted earlier would have defined Viva il Parroco or “long live the reverend” for its slapdashness – was utterly hopeless. As the minutes rolled by, it dawned on me that both team were made of players with clothes irons in lieu of feet. Still, to the valiant supporters of Buxoro it did not seem to matter much: the sun set, some floodlights were turned on and the cheering remained as frenzied as it was at the beginning. Drums kept on pounding a syncopated rhythm we could dance to, choirs we could only begin to understand ran from side to side and our flags fluttered in the evening breeze. The claque was led by a valorous band of brothers, amongst whom “Apocalypto”, thus nicknamed for his rather Mesoamerican features, stood head and shoulders above everyone else. We clapped, danced and had an almighty jolly good time, all whilst the ball bounced from head to head, and ankles were tackled with the same gay abandon as the leather sphere.
Click on any photo to start the slideshow.
In the meantime, I had started to get acquainted with my seatmate, a bear of a man who I took to call Muscles. Muscles chewed shovelfuls of snuff tobacco, pirouetted a large drum stick as if it was his own prehistoric club, smelt just ripe and swore so much that the other ultras had to repetitiously ask him to moderate his tone. He was a great company and we were having the best time. But that was when disaster struck.
Corner from the left for Pakhtakor. As the ball arched in toward the box our goalie, Amanov, abandoned his position to pick up some invisible daisies, or to do something which, from our point of view, was pretty unclear. Whatever the intentions, he succeeded in being beaten by Griffiths, the Aussie, whose wide forehead pistoned the ball towards the unguarded net. The goal had all but been assigned, were it not for the providential intervention of a Buxoro defender’s face, against which the ball slammed, undoubtedly causing life-changing injuries but saving the goal, which – at the end of the day – was all that mattered. The ball bounced back into the penalty box; Amanov tried to recover some dignity by slapping it away, failed, gave up and returned back; in the meantime, Goncalves, Tashkent’s Portuguese attacker, tossed the ball towards a squad mate. One of the Buxoro guys saw the ball cruising towards him; he remembered Ronaldinho’s Crazy Scorpion kick from FIFA Street Football and decided to give it a go. Needless to say, it ended in disaster: the ball bounced a few feet away from Goncalves, who threw himself in pursuit; Buxoro’s number 10, Salomov, threw a kick like a horse, aiming to launch the sphere into near-orbit. He obviously missed, delivering a kung-fu kick to Goncalves, who rightly fell to the ground in a series of spasms that were almost believable. Penalty.
We’re there any women in the crowd or is that a no go?
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It was, in fairness, a bit of a “sausage fest”. don’t think it was a ‘no-go’ area, perhaps it was just that local Uzbek women don’t really enjoy football; come think of it, I don’t normally see a lot of ladies in Italy either.
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I guess that’s true in a way…. Here in Australia a lot of women go to games. But I once went to a Boca juniors game and let’s just say all the men around me were loving it when they saw me. Easiest place to pick up a fella I reckon!
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Hahaha, yeah I guess you’re right, and in Bukhara it’d have been the same (as long as fake leather jackets and golden teeth are to one’s liking I suppose)
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I am not a futball enthusiast at all, but this was so damn entertaining. I love how positive the atmosphere was. Faces filled with jubilation instead of the Neanderthal belligérance seen in Europe. I would pay big bucks to see video proof of your participation in the dervish dance.
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Well, unfortunately no such video exists (unless that drone overhead…). It was really good-natured fun. Loved it.
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Great combination of soccer play-by-play, travelogue, and social commentary!
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Football, Rich, football! 😉 Anyhow, glad you liked it. I missed some proper, no-fuss, honest football. Sometimes I feel like flying over to Germany where prices are low, stands are packed and, I hear, fun is guaranteed. This was a good fix.
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The beautiful game does not attract me much, but I too (like Julie) read this with a smile a mile wide. Very humorous and also full of the kind of camaraderie among strangers that I love to find on my travels (even though my encounters have not included men who looked like I should name them Muscles!).
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I think the game is just 30% of the beauty of a football match. The rest, really, is the people; I’ve never found another place where weirdos become normal or, even, when homophobes hold you by hand at tense moments! It’s the beauty of football. Thanks for reading Lexi.
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