are you ready for some football?

[by aaron] Khujand was been all abuzz with the World Cup qualifying soccer match. The stadium was expected to be full, and a group of us had our tickets as well. It was a Group C match: Tajikistan vs The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (better known as "North Korea"). I was hoping to see the visitors come out in this formation (I can only assume from this video that party rock anthem is their national anthem).

As we approached the stadium, we found thousands of riot police and soldiers herding people away. I never underestimate the effectiveness of simply acting like you know what you're doing, so I walked right through them. All my friends were stuck behind the riot police so I just stood there getting pics and vids of what was happening. It was probably be more interesting than the soccer; riot police beating people seemingly randomly, with occasional groups of young men breaching the lines and making a run for the stadium.


This little doggie looks far too friendly to want to bite your face off...

I wound up climbing the hill to watch with King Somoni.

From my view it was clear that there was no room in the stadium, but that wasn't stopping thousands of people from crowding around on all sides...

Check out these guys in the middle of the photo climbing in the facade of the stadium to get in...


Behind the stadium we could see a group of maybe a thousand boys going all gaza on the police and throwing stones (I suppose anyone who watches the news knows that throwing stones is just what you do when you see people in riot gear), then the police would charge and the boys would run away before doing it all over again a few minutes later.

In front of the entrance there was a fire truck giving people a shower when things got too tense.

In the middle of this picture you can see the crowd tore down a portion of the fence. It didn't gain them anything as about a hundred riot police plugged the hole pretty quickly...

Back to the soccer: We waited long enough to hear the anthems and see a few of the players in the tiny triangle of field that we could see before giving up and going home. That's North Korea in white and Tajikistan in red. We even saw the ball once...

Tajikistan came into the match 0-5 in Group C with a goal ratio of 0-17. That is not very good. We finished the game with our first goal, and we drew 1-1! So I think that counts as a victory all things considered.