Tashkent: Hundreds of police filled the rafters of JAR Stadium a good three hours before kick-off between Uzbekistan and UAE Wednesday as the heartland of bleak Bunyodkor gave way to an Olympic fever pitch of epic proportion.
Roads around the 9,000 seater ground closed, and a city bleached by winter but with a glimmer of spring grounded to a halt. The industrial west side of town splattered with Soviet tenements and divided by dusty lanes choked with vehicles of a by-gone age, awoke from its slumber to take note of what would be an historic first for the embryonic nation.
Neither completely Russian, East European, Turkish, Iranian or Chinese but with smatterings of all at once, Tashkent's skyline of Persian styled mosque domes and derelict soviet skyscrapers lined by scorched leafless branches and thronged with flat-capped, bear-skin coated old gentlemen with wrinkled faces, warm smiles and gold teeth - was in its elements yesterday.
Modern but ancient, beautiful but rough around the edges western classic pop hits burst out over loud speakers while all around the typography and tone alienated as much as it engaged.
Giant flags waved at every turnstile entrance and drums, horns and sirens were sounding intermittently long before kick-off. Controlled confusion and the heavily guarded chaos of pre-match celebratory atmosphere led to contradictions at every turn as regimented lines of police filed even straighter queues of support into the grounds in nothing more than quiet mutterings under the echoing cracks of a fireworks test.
Bitter breeze but warm sunlight shone on a crowd designed to be imposing but helplessly hospitable and friendly at the same time. As a hundred or so Emirati fans - all in national dress - filtered into the ground, they were jokingly booed as banter and then warmly clapped to their seats by a crowd at its feet and rocking to the ‘final countdown' and ‘simply the best' before jutting into more cultural and traditional tracks.
Confidence from a nation quickly making its mark on Asian football, as if from nowhere, didn't go unnoticed by the UAE's travelling contingent as their recent rise over their central Asian neighbours and beyond, somehow chronicles the path of a nation coming out of the shadows, but happily retreating back there, in every sense.
