A 0-0 in the frozen steppe

The train from Almaty took seventeen hours, across a white plain so empty that the horizon was only a rumour. I arrived at Astana-1 station at four in the afternoon, the temperature minus thirty-one. The city's towers stood in the cold like monuments to a future that had already passed. A shared taxi cost nine hundred tenge, and the driver said, "You are here for the football? Good luck staying alive."

By the ground, the food stalls were doing a brisk trade in baursak and shashlik. I ate a bowl of lagman, the noodles thick and the broth hot enough to scald the throat, and watched the Fehérvár fans arrive in a small, brave knot of red and blue. They had come from Hungary by way of Moscow, and they stamped their feet on the frozen tarmac. "We are used to cold," one said, "but this is something else."

Inside, the Astana Arena felt bigger than its 5,055 crowd. The roof was closed, but the cold still seeped through the concrete. The home fans sang in Kazakh, a low, mournful song that rose and fell like the wind outside. The pitch was artificial, bright green against the grey of the stands.

The match itself was a stalemate of long shots and half-chances. Astana had the best of the first half, a shot from distance that clipped the top of the bar. Fehérvár pressed after the break, their left wing-back Krisztián Mohl running himself into the frozen ground, but the ball would not go in. The final whistle came as a mercy, and the players shook hands with breath steaming from their mouths.

I walked back to the station through the empty streets, past the glowing pyramid of the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation. It was midnight, and the temperature had dropped again. Somewhere behind me, the last of the Fehérvár fans were singing, their voices thin in the vast, cold air.