Over the past decade, the southern Kazakhstani club BIIK-Shymkent has attracted players to Central Asian country with the promise of regular UEFA Women’s Champions League football and, with it, a valuable platform to further their career prospects. It has, in turn, become the first stop in developing many world-class talents. While Shymkent, Kazakhstan’s third-largest city with a population of over a million people, also has a men’s club, FC Ordabasy, which won the league title as recently as 20
While Shymkent, Kazakhstan’s third-largest city with a population of over a million people, also has a men’s club, FC Ordabasy, which won the league title as recently as 2023, it has been put on the football map thanks to its wildly successful women’s side. For 12 successive years between 2013 and 2025, when BIIK were finally dethroned by rivals Aktobe, the team had a monopoly on the Kazakhstani championship.
That dominance ensured the club were consistently involved in European football in some capacity, whether the Champions League qualifiers or that competition proper. BIIK have reached the tournament’s round-of-16 stage on four occasions in the past decade, most recently in 2021, albeit suffering a 9-1 aggregate humbling at the hands of German giants Bayern Munich when they got there.
The solitary goalscorer for BIIK in that tie was Racheal Kundananji.
Less than three years later, the Zambian forward became the most expensive women’s footballer when she swapped Spain’s Madrid CFF for California-based Bay FC of the National Women’s Soccer League.
Kundananji recognizes the role BIIK played in her meteoric rise; the Kazakh club signed a promising teenage athlete with technical limitations from Indeni Roses in her homeland, and helped her become one of African women’s football’s most feared forwards.
“Nobody believed in me before I went there, but the coach did — he saw something in me,” Kundananji tells The Athletic. “I’m grateful, because he didn’t hesitate to include me in his team.
“I wasn’t that good tactically, but the BIIK coaches made sure they helped me in that area, and I became better when I was with the team.”
Kaloyan Petkov was the BIIK head coach who nurtured Kundananji’s talent. He remembers her journey vividly, from watching her in action on grainy Facebook videos to waving her off on her departure to Spanish side Eibar in 2021. In between, the pair worked together for two successful years at BIIK, a period that coincided with Kundananji’s reputation first beginning to soar.
“She was raw; unbelievable stamina, but she couldn’t finish well,” Petkov says. “We built a daily program for her, one-on-ones every morning. After two years, she became a very good finisher. And now you see where she is.”
Kundananji is not Petkov’s only success story. The Bulgarian, who moved from the United States to take charge of BIIK in 2012, possesses an undeniable eye for spotting potential. For a decade up to 2022, many who played under him in Kazakhstan have gone on to be established internationals.
Mexico’s Desirée Monsiváis, formerly Liga MX Femenil’s record goalscorer, joined BIIK in 2015, and recently crowned African champions Nigeria had two former BIIK players in their title-winning ranks: forward Chinwendu Ihezuo of Mexican side Pachuca and NWSL side Houston Dash’s defender Michelle Alozie (who is now with the Chicago Stars). At that same AFCON tournament last summer, Algeria’s Imane Chebel and Zambian quintet Kundananji, Grace Chanda, Lushomo Mweemba, Prisca Chilufya and Ireen Lungu were among the BIIK alumni competing.
Chris Atkins, senior agent at TMJ, helped engineer Kundananji’s move to Europe and believes BIIK’s success owed as much to timing as to Petkov’s eye for talent.
“Kazakhstan was obviously never immediately top of the list when it came to potential destinations for talented young players,” Atkins says, “but Kaloyan was ahead of the rest of the game in terms of scouting talent in Africa.
“At that time, BIIK had the comparative financial resources to sign players like Ihezuo off the back of being the second-top scorer at the Under-17 World Cup in 2014, or even Kundananji after a breakthrough at AFCON in 2018.
“What BIIK offered was a shot at playing high-level opposition every year in the Champions League. At the same time, Kaloyan is a coach who had repeatedly shown that he would improve and develop talents to a level where they could adapt fairly instantaneously when they moved on to the demands at a higher level.”
According to BIIK’s sporting director, Damelya Abduali, success bred success as she was able to point to myriad examples of players whose careers continued on an upward trajectory after their time in Kazakhstan.
“We have shown that we have a great record when it comes to finding African players and giving them a chance,” Abduali says. “Now, when I am talking to potential players, I can say, ‘Racheal Kundananji started with us, and look where she is now’.
“She was disciplined, and she is a great example — though we have many examples. For more than 10 years, we’ve been playing in the Champions League. Even if a player gets just 20 minutes there, it’s very good for their CV. That’s why I tell agents that BIIK is a corridor; if you start here, you move forward 100 per cent.”
The facilities in Shymkent consistently surprise visitors. With nine pitches and accommodation available in the city’s sports village, BIIK has a better setup than many of the men’s teams in Kazakhstan. The club is supported financially by its president Bauyrzhan Abdubaitov, who is also chairman of Kazakhstan’s Women’s Football Committee and on the executive committee of the Kazakhstan Football Federation.
“I think it is unusual for a women’s team to have their own field and facilities,” says Abduali. “I remember when (France’s eight-time UEFA Women’s Champions League winners) Lyon came here, their president was shocked by how good the conditions were. They couldn’t believe it was in Kazakhstan.”
Abduali’s sales pitch is well-honed and is not only aimed at African players — earlier this year, she convinced American defender Halle Rogers to swap the University of Maine in the far north-east of the U.S. for the vast mid-Asian steppe. And while BIIK fell short of making it to the main draw of either the Champions League or the inaugural playing of the second-tier Europa Cup this season, the 25-year-old got to take part in qualifiers for those competitions in Slovenia and Switzerland — which she found hugely valuable.
“These are experiences most young American players don’t get,” Rogers says. “I’ve been watching the Champions League since I was eight years old, and suddenly I was part of it. It still doesn’t feel real. BIIK gave me the chance to live my dream of being a professional footballer.
“This club has had so many big names pass through. It seems random, but it’s become a place where players can launch their careers.”
Rogers, who has now moved on from BIIK, was wooed by the club’s impressive list of alumni, but admits that moving nearly 6,000 miles from the United States to Kazakhstan was a major cultural shift.
“The toughest part was the language barrier,” she says. “In Shymkent, if you go to a coffee shop, there’s maybe a 20 per cent chance someone will speak English. I’d never experienced that before. But some of the local players really helped me with things like SIM cards, banks… all the little things. They made me feel welcome.
“BIIK is also incredibly professional. In college, we played our home games on a (artificial) turf pitch that doubled as the baseball diamond. In Shymkent, we had multiple grass and artificial pitches —a lot more space devoted to football.”
For other young American players, Kazakhstan could — somewhat surprisingly — represent an appealing new frontier.
The NWSL’s collective bargaining agreement, agreed in August 2024, abolished the college draft system and introduced unrestricted free agency — bringing the U.S. game closer to the global transfer market.
Prospects now have to negotiate directly with clubs, which has expanded the pool of players chasing NWSL contracts. For some, a detour abroad, particularly to clubs participating in elite European competition, can feel like a clearer runway into the professional game.
Much of BIIK’s success over the past decade has been down to a blend of effective scouting and coaching, but the increasing competitiveness of European club football and the explosion of women’s football globally have made the former more challenging. Where once BIIK benefitted from a superior understanding of African football, notably the grassroots game in Zambia and Nigeria, it is no longer the sole custodian of that knowledge.
The rapidly-growing Turkish Women’s Football Super League has emerged as a more popular and lucrative bridge for African players looking to make their name in Europe, while the restructuring of UEFA’s competitions mentioned above is also having its desired impact. The European game is becoming increasingly democratized, enabling new clubs to get a foothold in the transfer market.
But BIIK can still lean on their legacy, and there have been some truly memorable Champions League nights in Shymkent. In September 2018, a Barcelona side who would go on to make the final were beaten 3-1 in the first leg of a round-of-32 tie, before losing the return fixture 3-0 in Spain; a last-minute goal from Netherlands international midfielder Lieke Martens broke BIIK hearts.
“That was with a team built from players we found ourselves: Americans, Zambians, Nigerians,” recalls BIIK coach Petkov, who returned to Shymkent in 2024 after a two-year hiatus working in Lithuania. “When you do that, the big clubs start to notice.
“Before, I’d literally find players on Facebook; that’s how Racheal and others came. Now, after what has happened, the big teams are watching Africa directly. For us, it’s harder and, of course, we need to keep playing in the Champions League to keep appealing to players like this. It’s the big showcase that makes everybody want to come.”
Bay FC’s Kundananji certainly remembers those high-profile games fondly and appreciates that BIIK has always accepted its role as a gateway club.
“Every time we played a Champions League team, my aim was to go to one of the teams we were playing against,” she says. “Even if we lost, I wanted to do something that might make the other team like me and try to sign me. I always saw it as the first step.”
Kundananji still feels that BIIK represents a good option, particularly for young African players with aspirations of making it in Europe.
“It would have been so hard if I came directly from Zambia to Spain,” she says. “Going to BIIK first made the move to Europe easier. My advice (for young players) is: if you are dreaming big, you don’t have to take the biggest step first. Start from the bottom, then go higher.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Bay FC, NWSL, Women's Soccer
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