FC Astana – the little club with deep pockets
When Benfica make the 3,800-mile journey to Kazakhstan as part of the group stage of this season’s Champions League they will be taking on the remotest and smallest team in the competition – and also one of the richest.
FC Astana became the first central Asian team to get to this round of the competition after a dramatic late goal gave them a victory over Cypriot club Apoel Nicosia last month.
The reward, along with facing former champions Benfica, are matches again the Spanish giants Atlético Madrid and Turkish club Galatasaray.
Ex-Barcelona defender Eric Abidal pulls out FC Astana in the UEFA Champions League draw. Photograph: Marcio Machado/ZUMA Press/Corbis
FC Astana’s success also means a windfall for the club, as each of the 32 teams in the group stage is awarded an estimated €12m for participating, plus €1.5m for every win and €500,000 for every draw.
Most football teams in Europe would consider the millions of euros in earnings to be the biggest benefit of playing in the Champions League, but that’s not the case for FC Astana. Like many things in Kazakhstan the club was created and is owned by the state, and is part of a campaign to promote the country’s newly minted, remote, and rather unknown capital city: Astana.
The official owner of the club, which was only formed six years ago, is the country’s super-rich sovereign wealth fund, known as Samuryq-Qazyna.
Among the fund’s assets are Kazakhstan’s postal system and the state oil and gas company KazMunayGas, as well as banks, mines, airlines, airports and the country’s railways.
Samuryq-Qazyna’s extensive holdings, estimated to be worth about €66.5bn, technically make FC Astana one of the richest teams in the Champions League. Although a direct comparison is difficult, Forbes places Real Madrid’s net worth at €30bn and Barcelona’s at €2.8bn. The fund’s deep pockets have already paid for a 30,000-seater stadium, the Astana Arena, costing €164m to construct and a squad valued at €14.5m.
Samuryq-Qazyna’s head is Omirzaq Shukeev, a former deputy prime minister and economics adviser to president Nursultan Nazarbayev. The club is also a member of Nazarbayev’s Astana Presidential Sports Club, created in 2012 to provide financial support for several sports teams that compete on the international stage.
All seven of the club’s members have Astana in their name, and several feature the powder blue and yellow colours of the Kazakh flag. Best-known among them is the Astana cycling team, home to some of the world’s best racing talent including Alberto Contador, Vincenzo Nibali, Fabio Aru and, for a short period before the doping allegations caught up with him, Lance Armstrong.
Though still haunted by doping suspicions, the Astana team is an established part of international cycling, and their presence at elite events has brought incalculable amounts of – mostly positive – publicity to the Astana brand, the real goal of the club’s financial backers.
Italian cyclist Fabio Aru of Astana at the 2015 Vuelta a España cycling race. Photograph: Javier Lizon/EPA
Kazakh officials are no doubt hoping that FC Astana will reap similar PR benefits when they play against some of the sports top teams in the Champions League, one of the most-watched sports competitions in the world.
Nazarbayev congratulated the team after the Apoel match, and noted that “Astana will now have soccer battles with the world brands”.
Darhan Kaletaev, FC Astana’s chairman, was quick to thank the godfather of the Astana sporting enterprise. “This victory was achieved thanks to the hard work of the coaching staff, the football-loving people of Astana, and the support of the president of Kazakhstan,” he said.
The team’s success may help Kazakh officials forget the sting of narrowly missing out to Beijing to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The Olympics would have brought significant positive publicity to Kazakhstan, where Nazarbayev – in power since before the 1991 Soviet Union break up – exercises tight control over society, politics and the economy.
International human rights groups had protested the possibility of awarding the games to Kazakhstan because of its dismal rights record.
At present, FC Astana is the lowest ranked of the 32 teams in the Champions League and, although it avoided being grouped with current footballing superpowers such as defending champions Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich, their group still holds some significant talent, with Atlético Madrid reaching the Champions League final in 2014.
But even if the club doesn’t advance past the first stage, the exposure the Kazakh team and its namesake, Astana, will get from worldwide audience seems sure to make its owners in the capital very happy.
Benfica host FC Astana at the Estádio da Luz on 15 September at 7.45pm GMT. FC Astana will host Benfica on the 25 November
A version of this article first appeared on RFE/RL