FC Astana Crashed Out of Champions League

FC Astana lost to FC Dynamo Brest in the first qualifying round of the UEFA Champions League.

The Kazakhstani squad had a rather unsuccessful debut in the match: by the middle of the first half, the Belarusian team scored three unanswered goals against Astana’s goalkeeper Dmitry Nepogodov. More than that, two of the three were scored by Kazakhstan-born Mikhail Gordeichuk.

The Belarus team quickly scored again, and only after that did the Kazakhstanis show signs of life: Marin Tomasov scored their first goal right before the break – 4:1.

In the second half, the opponents traded goals twice which did not save FC Astana from a humiliating loss with a score of 3:6. This concludes the 2020/21 Champions League season for the best club of Kazakhstan.

«We got an extremely bad result. The team played very poorly in defense, and every counterattack was a threat to our goal. Now it’s hard to say anything since we had hoped for a better outcome. But the opponent played fast and took the ball away. We had a terrible match,» said Michal Bilek, head coach of FC Astana, after the game in Brest.

It bears reminding that in all stages of the 2020/21 European Cup qualification, the winner is determined after a single game.

However, the international season isn’t over for Astana: now the team is going to try their hand in the second round of the UEFA Europa League.