Words: Charlie Hood
Photos: Louis Hollis
Popular Front founder Jake Hanrahan's back with another episode of his new series AWAY DAYS, and this one's right up Gløry's street. Thirteen Sector takes us right into the middle of Kazakhstan's burgeoning football hooligan scene. Yeah, Kazakhstan.
The country's biggest club, FC Kairat, famously eliminated Celtic from the Champions League this summer, but it's not exactly renowned as a hotbed of football culture. So, how did this scene spring up? When we asked Jake, he told us it started with a bunch of FC Aktobe fans who went abroad to study. Instead of just picking up degrees, they came home with a taste for pyro, tifos, terrace chants - and a bit of organised chaos. They rallied around Stand 13 at Aktobe's ground, set up shop as "13 Sector", and from there, the infamous Oi Boys firm (a nod to English hooligan culture) was born.
What really caught our ear was how Kazakhs have twisted the whole thing into something uniquely their own. As Jake put it, in Europe, ultras are usually just the noise and colour, while hooligans are the lads scrapping in the woods. In Kazakhstan? They're both. They've even coined a new word for it: hooltras. Think choreo and drums in the stadium, then straight into organised 18-vs-18 forest fights after.
And it's no small operation. Under the 13 Sector banner, there are multiple firms, hundreds strong, travelling in from across the country. When we spoke about Aktobe vs Kairat, Jake just laughed – the rivalry is so fierce that even if the police shut down a planned fight, the tension bleeds through every second of the derby.
The film itself follows a young lad called Asmir. "An absolute angel," Jake told us - the kind of kid who'll sort his family out one day, then square up with a rival firm the next. His matchday isn't a million miles off any Saturday in Europe: drums and banners prepped, Stoney on, pub meet-up with the boys, 90 minutes of noise. Only difference? Some of those boys might roll up on horseback.
Hanrahan's doc Thirteen Sector lands on the AWAY DAYS YouTube channel in October/November. We can't wait.
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