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For Wales, Thursday’s World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan presents challenges aplenty. In between preparing to play on an artificial surface at the Astana Arena, there is a balance between maximising precious time on the pitches and prioritising recovery. Wales took an eight-hour direct flight from Cardiff to Astana, avoiding Ukrainian airspace, and their only real training session as a full squad will be 24 hours before kick-off. Player bodyclocks will be programmed to a two-hour – not four-hour – time difference.
One Wales supporter, John McAllister, spied a challenge in the fixture. His odyssey, inspired by the BBC’s Race Across the World, began five weeks ago when he left home in Barry, south Wales. Since 29 July he has been travelling from Cymru to Kazakhstan, the world’s ninth-largest country by land area and the largest to be landlocked, documenting his journey in a series of YouTube videos. The 26-year-old has covered about 5,000km. More than 1,100 Wales fans will be at the game but only one, understandably, has been directly referenced by Craig Bellamy. “We’ve got to see him, because it means so much to us,” the Wales manager said.
McAllister, who regularly follows Wales away, admits this is about as far-flung as it gets. Thursday’s match will be his 12th of the trip. He highlights Fenerbahce’s Champions League date with Feyenoord in Istanbul as his favourite owing to the supercharged atmosphere. He paid a fixer to source a ticket and soon found himself immersed with the locals in a park over the road from the stadium. “Three hours before kick-off, there’s crazy pyrotechnics going off,” he says. Belgrade brought three appetising games, while the £1.35 entry to a second-tier game in Almaty, close to the Chinese border and further east than Islamabad and Mumbai, also warrants a mention. “I’ll watch anything … my bread and butter is going to Barry Town in the Cymru Premier League.”
McAllister ticked off France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands – and England – on his first day. Then he travelled across the Balkans and signed up to a 36-hour train across Turkey into Georgia. Wearing a Cymru T-shirt in a Tbilisi bar, shortly after photographing the Mother of Georgia monument, he felt an air of familiarity. “A fella taps me on the shoulder and says: ‘Shwmae, are you from Wales?’” McAllister says, recalling how he was suddenly talking to a man from Rhoose, a village located few miles from Barry. “It was crazy. He said: ‘I live out here and I’m going out on a stag do tonight. Do you fancy joining us, if you’re on your own?’ So I went on this Irish fella’s stag with 30 strangers.”
Chacha, a Georgian brandy, went down a treat, and things went so swimmingly McAllister bagged an invite to the wedding – only it was the same day he was flying to Atyrau, northwest Kazakhstan. “Through gritted teeth and a lack of alternatives,” he says, given, ideally, he wanted to avoid air travel unless absolutely necessary. But the options were limited with Russia in effect out of bounds and travel through Iran requiring a government-approved guide at all times. The land border into Azerbaijan is closed, so crossing the Caspian Sea via Baku was also regarded off-menu. “Getting the passport stamp, actually realising I was in Kazakhstan, was pretty cool,” McAllister says.
For Wales, second in Group J at the halfway stage of qualifying, Kazakhstan represents their sole competitive match this window; Wales host Canada in Swansea for a friendly next Tuesday. Last week Bellamy highlighted how “athletic and stubborn” Kazakhstan, 83 places below his side in the Fifa rankings, possess more players in the Champions League clubs than in his squad, owing to Kairat Almaty’s progress against Celtic.
McAllister attended the second leg in Almaty. “We’re in a kind of can’t-drop-points situation because we’re going to have to go toe-to-toe with Belgium to qualify automatically. But we really seem to have moved forward with our style of play – the near-miss comeback against Belgium proved how far we’ve come. Things have been very promising under Bellamy.”
Now after traversing east, taking in 17 trains, 11 buses, four time zones and plenty of beer, the rest of the Red Wall is on the horizon. “They are all flooding into the city,” says McAllister, who has seen Christmas trees in the main square in Erzurum, a Turkish city close to the Armenian border covered in snow for six months of the year, experienced an impromptu heavy-metal night on arrival in Kazakhstan and explored Vukovar, a Croatian city “on those dark tourism lists” after it was sieged by Yugoslavia in 1991.
Those sceptical of his masterplan at the outset are now in awe. “I think the unanimous answer at the beginning was: you’re crazy,” McAllister says. “But since I said this was what I was doing and I’ve posted updates along the way, people have been fantastic. Everyone’s been very supportive and sent lots of encouragement. It’s been very good fun.”
