Tajikistan: Labor migrants play for pride in own football league

by KONSTANTIN SALOMATIN

A player with the Roof of the World team shakes off three players with Alamut during the final of the tournament in Moscow.

It’s not all work and no play for a group of Tajik labor migrants living in Moscow. Thanks to the efforts of an enterprising expat, labor migrants have their own thriving, 16-team football league.

The mastermind behind the league is Anzor Nazarkhudoev, who left Tajikistan’s Pamir region for Russia over a decade ago. He settled in Moscow, scratching out an existence as a laborer. Over time, however, he managed to save some money and open a small business that sells goods at a Moscow market. Throughout his time in Moscow he remained in close contact with other Tajiks from the Pamirs, so much so that he’s now considered the unofficial “mayor” of the Pamiri community in the Russian capital. The idea to form a football league comprising teams of mainly Pamiri Tajiks came to him five years ago.

In putting together the league, Nazarkhudoev was motivated in part by his own experience. He was a decent player as a young man in Tajikistan, when a civil war erupted in the country in 1992. The fighting lasted over five years, putting an end to Nazarkhudoev’s football-playing days. “When the war was over, and order was restored, my youth had already passed by,” he said. He doesn’t want the current generation of young Tajiks to miss out on good times, like he did.

“There is a lack of places where our young [Tajik] compatriots] can meet. So, the idea about a [football league] came to my mind, Nazarkhudoev said. “The guys [labor migrants]… just work and work every day. … In order to bring some color to their gray everyday lives, they can play football.”

The league comprises 16 teams, with each paying an entry fee of 10,000 rubles (roughly $266). Each team plays every other team in the league twice during the season, followed by a playoff round among the top teams to determine the champion. By far the biggest operating expense for each team is the stadium rental fee for games, a cost of about 1.3 million rubles (over $34,000). With more than 1.1 million Tajiks believed to be working in Russia these days, many of them in Moscow, there’s no problem with filling team rosters. Far more guest workers want to play than there are spots available.

Eurasia Net for more

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