“rise from obscurity”.

Shakhter Karagandy – the Back of Beyond

Football first appeared in Kazakhstan in the town of Semipalatinsk according to the Football Federation of Kazakhstan, the beautiful game having been imported by merchants who had visited England previously. In that period this city, now suggestively referred to as Semey – synonymous with being uncomfortably close to where the Soviets tested their environmentally-catastrophic atomic bomb programme – was one of the largest trade centres of Middle Asia and Siberia.

For Shakhter Karagandy, they had to wait until April 17, 1958 for their inaugural match, which ended in a 1-0 defeat against Lokomotiv Chelyabinsk, who also hail from where some consider to be the most radioactively contaminated spot on the planet. In this match, as vividly regaled by a phantom fanaticwhose biblically-paced historiography of Shakhter Karagandy can be found here (in Russian), the fans arrived by the spade-load to the stadium, masked in coal dust having scurried straight from a long, grueling day at the mine. Shakhter, meaning pitmen in Russian, are analogous with Celtic in some respects, who are both today romantically characterised by working class values.

Shakhter’s finest hour, should they not qualify for this season’s Champions League, came in 1962 when they won the right to play in the Vysshaya (Top) League. They had fought for victory in the Soviet First League, a second tier of Soviet football then consisting of several groups, the winners of which qualifying for the final tournament. However, in the spirit of the Soviet Union, the league was reorganized the following