This will be the longest journey the Blues have ever undertaken in European football. Kazakhstan is significantly further east than Baku, where we played Qarabag in 2017 and Arsenal two years later.

Our game against Astana is scheduled for Thursday 12 December. You can see the rest of Chelsea's Conference League fixtures here.

Factfile

Full name: Astana Football Club

Country: Kazakhstan

City: Astana

Formation: 2009, as Lokomotiv Astana

Honours: Kazakhstan Premier League winners (seven times, most recently 2022), Kazakhstan Cup winners (three times, most recently 2016)

Head coach: Grigoriy Babayan

2023/24 league finish: 2nd

Stadium: Astana Arena

Colours: Sky blue and yellow

Nickname: The yellow-and-blues

European record

Champions League: Astana have reached the group stage of the Champions League once, in 2015/16, after progressing through three qualifying rounds. They were unbeaten at home – drawing against Atletico Madrid, Benfica and Galatasaray – but picked up a solitary point on their travels and finished fourth.

Europa League: Astana made it through to the last 32 of the 2017/18 Europa League, becoming the first Kazakh side to reach the knockout stages of European competition in the process. They were beaten by Sporting Lisbon 6-4 on aggregate.

Conference League: They were knocked out in the qualifying rounds of the first two editions of the Conference League before making the group stage last time out. They lost against Dinamo Zagreb and Viktoria Plzen home and away and ended up in third place ahead of Kosovan outfit Ballkani.

2024 so far…

The Kazakh Premier League runs from spring to late autumn because of the inclement weather. Astana are eighth in the 14-team league with some games in hand on those above them because of their European exploits.

The most notable came in the Conference League play-off round. Astana lost the first leg to Brann 2-0, but back in Kazakhstan they scored three second-half goals without reply to secure a famous turnaround.

Current squad

Captain Abzal Beysebekov is a Kazakh international who has represented Astana over 400 times.

Nigerian striker Geoffrey Chinedu scored five goals in their six Conference League qualifying matches while another West African, Ousmane Camera, made his Guinea debut earlier this year. Marin Tomasov, a one-time Croatian international, is the club’s all-time top goalscorer.

Stadium

Due to renovation works on the impressive Astana Arena, which has a capacity of 30,000, a retractable roof and undersoil heating, they are playing their home league games at the 3000-seater Khan Taniri Stadium in Almaty, 750 miles south of Astana.

They played their Conference League qualifying home matches against Milsami, Corvinul, and Brann at the much larger Central Stadium in Almaty.