“We feel confident” – Kairat’s Urazbakhtin and Oksanen look ahead to the match against Riga

by Gregors Spricis

Riga FC will kick off its first-ever Conference League campaign on Thursday night against last season’s Champions League participants Kairat Almaty. The guests completed their nearly 4000km flight on Tuesday afternoon and trained the same evening before having their last training session at the Skonto stadium.

The team from the mountain city of Kazakhstan has already spent two days in Riga and so far has enjoyed the hospitality, as revealed by Kairat’s head coach Rafael Urazbakhtin.

“We had a short walk [on Wednesday]. We saw the old town, old buildings, and it’s very beautiful. The city reminds us of Bratislava and Ljubljana because we played there last year. Riga is a really beautiful city.”

Despite Kairat’s great recent showing in the European competitions, Riga have been made clear favourites by the bookmakers, with the advantage of the Skonto stadium playing a big part in that.

“Riga have that big of a coefficient because they play at home. It’s not correct to compare this team with last year’s because 5-6 players who played in the Champions League have already left the squad. This year it’s another squad with different players, and it’s different from last year.”

And Urazbakhtin is not wrong. Last winter, Kairat sold Valeriy Gromyko, Egor Sorokin, and Ofri Arad, not to mention Dastan Satpayev, the young Kazakh prodigy who joined Chelsea this summer. All four of them played a big part in Kairat’s previous year’s success.

Meanwhile, their most crucial player Jorginho suffered an injury in the Champions League qualifying tie against Omonia Nicosia back in July and has been sidelined ever since. However, despite these losses, Kairat have brought in exciting foreign players such as Marc Gual, Oiva Jukkola, and Gustavo Mendonca.

“It’s hard to say whether the strength of the squad is the same because last year we played in the Champions League. I don’t want to speak about it right now – which squad is better: the current one or last season’s? It’s not fair to compare the two. But judged by the results, I think playing in the Conference League this year is good for us.”

Another one of the new signings is Finnish midfielder Jaakko Oksanen, who is quite familiar with the city of Riga as his previous club KuPS overcame the challenge of RFS to qualify for the Conference League the season prior.

“I think it will be a tough match. We played RFS last year, which is the other big club from here. Both teams always fight for the Latvian title, and they both have loads of players from abroad and a big, big squad, so I think it will be a tough game for sure.”

Regarding the match, Oksanen revealed that he’s confident and that Kairat will look to start the Conference League well.

“I feel confident. A must-win match? I wouldn’t say, but of course this is one of the games we have to look at and take the 3 points. There are only six games, and if you want to go through, you need those 7-8 points.”

Same as Riga, Urazbakhtin’s men are fighting for the domestic title and currently sit second in the league, 4 points behind Ordabasy Shymkent. Answering the question of how his team plans to balance the two competitions, the 47-year-old Kazakh head coach responded determinedly, saying that they’ll take each game step by step.

“Both competitions are really important; every game is important, but we will do it step by step. We spoke with the team, and we have an agreement to make moves step by step. All attention is on Thursday’s game. We have six games this month, a game every 4 days – national championship and Europe – so we will do our best to combine them both.”

When describing the opponents, the manager singled out Riga’s aggression and their desire to control the game from the first minutes of the match.

“We know what football Riga plays. They like to play in possession and to control the game. I think tomorrow they’ll play in the same way. The stadium will be full. We know that they like to start the game actively with aggression and possession from the first minutes, and we’ll try to be ready for that. In the first minutes, we’ll try to hit on the counterattacks, and after that we’ll see.”

The atmosphere inside Kairat’s dressing room is one of confidence. Just like Riga, they aim to make it through the league phase – and what better way to begin that journey than by securing a win in their opening match?