Borat doesn’t do it for this Londonista, we have to admit – but we do concede that he was a brilliant creation. Oh, but that Sacha Baron Cohen had given him a fictitious homeland rather than using a real nation. Staines-istan, perhaps. The Kazakhs must be sick to their hat tassles of the hapless and rather revolting journalist.
Which is why we were pleased to note that on the grounds of upholding public decency the wearing of mankinis was banned at today’s England v. Kazakhstan game at Wembley. They have to be least appealing garments ever created. And Cohen himself agreed not to turn up and murder the Kazakh national anthem.
So all was set for a friendly if important match: we are talking World Cup Qualification, after all, which we gather is quite a big deal really. The Kazakh supporters were expected to number between 500 and 2000, and were mostly there purely as a gesture of national pride: Kazakhstan is not a great footie nation, and whilst most of its inhabitants are familiar with David Beckham, few can actually name their own top eleven.
Imagine our whoop-de-doop delight when we saw the Central Asian team giving the lads in white a right runaround. We mean, it’s not like we don’t support England, but you know, it’s that British thing about the underdog. Anyway, the English side still hammered them 5-1, but only after they got their act together in the second half. Someone called Heskey apparently played rather well, but kudos to Kukeyev, the Kazakh forward, for grabbing that one goal. Our only lament is that the stands seemed so empty. Still, we were there in spirit.
Picture from manuel | MC’s flickr stream under the Creative Commons Licence.
