Bernd Stork Decries Fitness Levels for Kazakhstan’s ‘biggest Ever Game’
The Kazakhstan coach, Bernd Stork, considers Saturday’s World Cup qualifier against England to be the “biggest game” in the country’s football history, though he conceded that the best he can hope for is that his players are not overwhelmed by their more illustrious opponents.
The German has conceded that his players are sometimes naive in matches and that their fitness levels suffer as games at this level progress: Stork is in dispute with three local clubs – Aktobe, Tobol and Lokomotiv Astana – who, he claims, have ignored his advice to improve the physical capabilities of their internationals. The Kazakhs currently lie fifth in Group Six and have conceded more goals, 16, than bottom-placed Andorra, the only team they have beaten.
“Sometimes the players lack concentration,” he said. “They go hunting the ball and lose the players they are supposed to be marking. We will see how they cope with the speed of the game. We have a problem in the second half of games when we lose goals. We do well until half-time and, after that, no good. The players are all flat on their backs. It’s unbelievable. We lost four goals in 10 minutes [against Belarus].
“Fitness levels are worse than when we played England at Wembley in October. The players are not as fit now. They go back to their clubs and the training is not so good, the fitness not so good. They train hard with no rest time. It’s the old Russian system.
“I’ve got big trouble with three big clubs because they don’t want to do what we want to do – regular testing, taking blood. They don’t want to do that. They say: ‘With our clubs we have success, we win cups.’ But international football is international standard. They don’t understand, they only stay and live in this country and they must go to another country to understand. I hope they trust me. But we will see.”
Asked what he hoped to achieve on Saturday, Stork was hardly optimistic. “That the result will not be so high as in the last two games,” said the German, recalling the 5-1 defeats by Belarus in April and at Wembley last October. “That we concentrate better. But it’s not a good time to play England. When they are tired, we are more tired. English clubs are far more fit than ours. We could play in the fifth league in Germany with our fitness so, when teams play very fast against us, we have big problems.
“I work for the future. I have very young players in my team and I work for next year, to gain experience against big teams like England. At Wembley, we lost concentration in the second half and lost the goals but I hope, this time, that will not happen and we have chances, also, to create goals. This is our biggest game and the players know this, but it is very difficult. We must stay very concentrated in defence and, when they have a free-kick or corner, we mustn’t lose the opponent and look to the ball rather than the man. This is a big problem in the whole of the country. They look the whole time like children playing. But we are changing it – slowly, but we are changing it.”
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