Kairat Almaty, in making the 2025/2026 Champions League – although not a first for a Kazakh side – made the country proud and certainly increased interest in the local game.
As with most other countries, Kazakhstan has football firmly listed at the top of its favourite sports, albeit surpassed by boxing when some of the nation’s best punchers take to the ring.
Football pitches are part of the urban furniture, and decent football complexes get booked up in advance. A number of well-known sides have academies here, not just domestic teams but those from abroad, Galatasaray being one of the leading such franchises.
On any day other than when the local team is playing, a walk through the principal city streets reveals little about what teams people support, be they domestic sides or some of the usual suspects banging in the goals way out west, largely because team colours and replica tops are not go-to outfits for even the most ardent fans.
Many people living in Almaty are happy to declare a love for Kairat, while, despite the excitement of the Champions League campaign, there are few who would express the same confidence in the view that the Kazakhstan champions are anywhere near as good as the best of world football.
It stands to reason that even those few who do wear Kairat tops on a normal day accept that standards here are not on a par with standards in Barcelona or Manchester, which ultimately means that the love they have for their local team tends to be divided, not shared with another team in Kazakhstan, inevitably, but with one or two teams west of Berlin.
So what football teams are popular in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and why?
Oscar is a pilot and happily settled in Almaty with his wife, also a pilot. He is a Kairat fan and followed their fortunes closely when they ran out against Arsenal and the others, but believes that English teams play the most exciting football.
“I actually root for West Ham,” he said, presumably worried that they are about to launch a promotion campaign.
“I watched a game once, and I was impressed with the mentality, the way they tried to play real football. And I have supported them ever since.”
Oscar also likes Swansea City, for as the reader may be aware, very few football fans are without the proverbial soft-spot for a second favourite team (even though they more often than not have no idea why – also the case with this pilot who played football himself as a child, and that to a decent level, too).
Alinur is passing through university and actually played for the aforementioned Galatasaray under-13s, the classy midfielder, the playmaker with grace, vision, power, he who always seems to have the ball on a piece of string. Scarcely looking down, always aware of exactly where it is.
This Juan Sebastián Verón of the Almaty youth league set-up confessed to shedding a few tears when the idol Lionel Messi left his beloved Barcelona, a team he loved so dearly that he wouldn’t even say the words Cristiano & Ronaldo during the height of the El Clásico rivalry in the late 2010s.
While indispensable to his title-winning Galatasaray, Alinur had to move on from football when choosing a more academic route to lasting success, perhaps with a heavy heart, but also without looking back.
Dimitriy is from Aktobe and, of course, knows his local side has a good pedigree, but gets more excited by two English sides – Manchester City and Liverpool.
Celebrating, therefore, about ten Premier League title wins in a row has fuelled his passion even more. Consider that in the UK, many millions of football fans support teams that never win a thing; evidently, Dimitriy has had a fantastic time of it with Pep and Klopp (and Slot) ruling the roost for so long.
I wonder how he’ll react to losing his title for the first time ever, should Arsenal manage to hang on this time.
“I started watching football in 2019, just as the great league rivalry between these two was beginning. The constant adrenaline, the intensity, the drama — it all happened between these two, and that’s what I liked about them.
“I don’t really follow local football, but if I had to choose one favourite, it would be FC Aktobe.”
Arai isn’t a huge football fan, but informs us with some authority that her favourite team is Manchester United. Back when she was young, her passing interest in football took root by watching the then-undisputed best English side take on the world – and win.
She doesn’t play, but her young son is starting and has reasonable talent – not quite perhaps on a par with Alinur, but keepy-ups seem to come quite naturally.
The trouble is, for his mum, he’s a City fan, too. Perhaps it’s lucky she doesn’t really care, because if Carrick gets the job permanently and Pep moves on, chances are it’ll be the two Manc sides duking it out towards the summit of the English Premier League next season.
The Most Popular Teams
Doing the rounds at a local footy complex located next to Almaty’s Central Stadium reveals a list of the usual suspects:
‘Real Madrid’, say a dozen or so, with Barcelona getting about the same number of harrumphs (if you know that film). Bayern Munich, Man Utd again, Inter, PSG, and Liverpool, oddly, who prop up the list with a vote or two, although I have to confess to passionately not supporting them, so I am inherently biased.
Napoli have a few fans, but all of them self-confessed Kevin de Bruyne fans who miss watching him at the Etihad and followed him over to Italy to see some more of those amazing curling pitch-level passes only he can make.
In soccer, choices of favourite team, unless determined by geography, in which case often imposed on the supporter (quite bitterly at times), tend to be arbitrary, and many of the keen players who offered their opinion didn’t have a quantifiable, verifiable, logical reason for their choice. Perhaps, they chose a team that wins (glory hunters!) or one with classier players.
None of those I spoke to today had spent time living in the city of their favourite team. It should be noted that many Kazakhstani students who study in the UK do select the team from the city in which they studied for 1-4 years, and no doubt some pubs will be full of fluent-English-speaking Arsenal fans when they contest the Champions League final later in May, because they studied in London and caught the Gunners bug.
In the early 2000s, Chelsea were probably the most popular English team in Almaty, but their form has withered of late, and it might take the arrival of the promising Kazakh talent, Dastan Satpayev, to rekindle the love that people here have for the west-London outfit. He arrives in summer, sadly at a struggling club, but with the potential to make his mark in the most exciting league in the world.
And One Surprise
One surprise, though, albeit among the soft-spot clubs as opposed to the favourite clubs who grace the Champions League year-in year-out, was a team very close to my own heart, Crewe Alexandra.
A young player, Roman (not his real name), one of those adding his voice to the Man City chorus, added that he also roots for a very unfashionable team from the north-west of England, the very same team I have followed for 35 years.
Nicknamed the Railwaymen, Crewe Alex are widely known for producing youth players and selling them to top teams, often for enormous transfer fees, but have won very little over their almost 150-year history.
When asked why, Roman shrugged, smiled, and simply said:
“I saw them on Football Manager, and I liked the name. My girlfriend is called Alexandra, so I had no choice really, they are my second favourite English team.
“I only check their results and, yes, I watch match highlights on YouTube on a Sunday morning, but I always make sure to do that.”
Now that was a pleasant surprise!
