KAZAKHSTAN coach Bernd Storck is on a mission to get his country known for football rather than comedy character Borat - and he is deadly serious about facing England at Wembley.
Storck has told his players to play without fear and not to be overawed by Fabio Capello's stars, to such an extent that he does not want them swapping shirts on the pitch with the likes of Wayne Rooney and David Beckham at the end of the World Cup qualifier.
Nothing is expected other than an England win but the Kazakhstan Football Federation have a long-term plan to reach the 2016 European Championships and Storck is blooding youngsters to give them experience, making sweeping changes to the squad.
The hope is that the country can shake off its association with Borat - the role played by Sacha Baron Cohen as a Kazakh travelling through America.
"The Borat film is nonsense, it is not like Kazakhstan," Storck said. "This is not the character of Kazakhstan's people. We are a serious country and are not to be compared with the film.
"Kazakhstan is a very big country with very nice people. It's a rich country with oil and gas, we have 15.5million people there."
Storck, however, admitted he was stunned by the high level of facilities for his side's preparations at St Albans FC and Watford's training ground.
He also let his players go shopping in Harrods and sight-seeing - but he does not want them to treat the clash at Wembley as a day out.
"If they look to change shirts straight away I will be upset," he said. "I'd rather buy them a shirt myself. This is not an important thing, they can swap in the tunnel.
"The players that go to Rooney or Beckham straight after the final whistle would never play again."
Storck is in charge on an interim basis following Arno Pijpers' dismissal, and the German-born former Borussia Dortmund player admits it is the biggest game of his career.
He also described the clash as the biggest game for the country, as their home matches normally draw crowds of 1,000 in Almaty. There is limited coverage of football in Kazakhstan - but the clash against England will be televised.
"We have only two or three newspapers in the week, people don't hear about football, the game against Croatia wasn't even shown on TV," he said.
"Even if we pulled off big result not many people in Kazakhstan would know about it, I hope people will wake up after the match and it will bring more people into the stadiums."
So far in qualifying, Kazakhstan have beaten Andorra but lost to Croatia and Ukraine.
Storck has now made his wholesale changes and it means Capello barely knows about the players he is up against.
"We are 100 places away from England, not interesting for Capello to know my players," Storck said.
"The players have nothing to lose against big team like England, we want to attack and be aggressive, when have chance we are going to go forward. Players must play without fear, then we can show what we can do.
"In our last game we didn't attack and this wasn't enough for Kazakhstan. I saw we had good players in Under-21s and I couldn't understand why we didn't have them in first team.
"I threw some players out, those who don't play in their city teams, and I think the current are better players than the last squad.
"This is not a gamble, I am a realistic, these are very good players."
Nothing is expected other than an England win but the Kazakhstan Football Federation have a long-term plan to reach the 2016 European Championships and Storck is blooding youngsters to give them experience, making sweeping changes to the squad.
The hope is that the country can shake off its association with Borat - the role played by Sacha Baron Cohen as a Kazakh travelling through America.
"The Borat film is nonsense, it is not like Kazakhstan," Storck said. "This is not the character of Kazakhstan's people. We are a serious country and are not to be compared with the film.
"Kazakhstan is a very big country with very nice people. It's a rich country with oil and gas, we have 15.5million people there."
Storck, however, admitted he was stunned by the high level of facilities for his side's preparations at St Albans FC and Watford's training ground.
He also let his players go shopping in Harrods and sight-seeing - but he does not want them to treat the clash at Wembley as a day out.
"If they look to change shirts straight away I will be upset," he said. "I'd rather buy them a shirt myself. This is not an important thing, they can swap in the tunnel.
"The players that go to Rooney or Beckham straight after the final whistle would never play again."
Storck is in charge on an interim basis following Arno Pijpers' dismissal, and the German-born former Borussia Dortmund player admits it is the biggest game of his career.
He also described the clash as the biggest game for the country, as their home matches normally draw crowds of 1,000 in Almaty. There is limited coverage of football in Kazakhstan - but the clash against England will be televised.
"We have only two or three newspapers in the week, people don't hear about football, the game against Croatia wasn't even shown on TV," he said.
"Even if we pulled off big result not many people in Kazakhstan would know about it, I hope people will wake up after the match and it will bring more people into the stadiums."
So far in qualifying, Kazakhstan have beaten Andorra but lost to Croatia and Ukraine.
Storck has now made his wholesale changes and it means Capello barely knows about the players he is up against.
"We are 100 places away from England, not interesting for Capello to know my players," Storck said.
"The players have nothing to lose against big team like England, we want to attack and be aggressive, when have chance we are going to go forward. Players must play without fear, then we can show what we can do.
"In our last game we didn't attack and this wasn't enough for Kazakhstan. I saw we had good players in Under-21s and I couldn't understand why we didn't have them in first team.
"I threw some players out, those who don't play in their city teams, and I think the current are better players than the last squad.
"This is not a gamble, I am a realistic, these are very good players."
Copyright (c) Press Association
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