KZBlog » World Cup

Not Much Worse

KZBlog — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 13:28:00 +0000

4-0. That was the final score of Germany vs. Kazakhstan Saturday. 3 in the first half, including one in the first four minutes and one in the last minute of the first half. In the second half, Germany relaxed and just tried to keep the Kazakhstan side scoreless, although Klose scored one more.

As Sports.kz points out in their article Class is class [RU], it’s not so much that Kazakhstan lost as Germany won. And 4-0 is not a bad showing for our boys:

“Experts” may draw conclusions and begin “attacks” on the head coach. Optimists will look to the absence of some players and lack of teamwork, as the reason for the defeat with a large score. The rest will wait for the next away team to come to Kazakhstan, an easier opponent than the three-time world cup winners.

Worse Than 3-0?

KZBlog — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:40:29 +0000

Saturday is the big game. Kazakhstan and Germany for the World Cup qualifiers. It’s probably not much of a surprise that the ESPN Preview doesn’t look good for Kazakhstan. So far Kazakhstan hasn’t a won a game in their group (Germany, Austria, Turkey, Belgium and Azerbaijan) and Germany hasn’t lost a game.

I was surprised that the named Nurbol Zhumaskaliyev the player to watch:

An attacking midfielder and the creative heartbeat of the national team, Zhumaskaliyev is the top international scorer in Kazakhstan’s ranks, with six goals from 53 caps over the past ten years. Last season, he was named the Kazakhstan Premier League’s Player of the Year after captaining FC Torbol to a first ever title, netting 15 goals along the way. He netted the biggest goal in his country’s history when, in 2007, his header handed the side a shock 2-1 victory over Serbia.

I always keep my eye on Ostepenko personally.

Odds are 1.02 for a Germany win and they’re predicting a worse score than the (quite respectable) 3-0 defeat last time they met in Astana.

Octopus Is Economic Threat

KZBlog — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:23:19 +0000

According to The Daily Telegraph and Kazakhstan’s Liter, the Kazakhstan Association of Bookmakers blames Paul the Octopus for a bad take from this year’s World Cup. Out of 10 billion tenge (almost $67 million) put down on World Cup matches in Kazakhstan, bookmakers only made 150 million tenge profit ($1 million), or 1.5%. They had hoped to make twice as much money.

So what happened? Apparently the blame lies on Paul who steered betters clear of making bad bets. Whether the octopus will be sued in the International Criminal Court for intention to defraud bookmakers and harm the economy of Kazakhstan has yet to be decided.

By the way, not sure what passion for sushi the Telegraph article is talking about here.

Play-By-Play

KZBlog — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:04:55 +0000

Should have mentioned this last night, but Chris Merriman, who admits to not being a huge football fan, has a bit of a play-by-play of the Kazakhstan-Croatia World Cup qualifying match. Kazakhstan was already out of contention to go to South Africa in 2010, but had Ukraine lost or tied Andorra last night, a Croatian victory would have meant a playoff between Ukraine and Croatia for a slot. England already has secured a place in the group. So Croatia might have had something to gain (although Ukraine won 6-0 so it turns out Croatia’s victory is all for nought) and Kazakhstan could have gone out with a bang. A 2-1 loss to the third place team in their group is not bad for KZ though!