Today, Zhenis Astana announced that Georgian-Kazakstani billionaire Mikheil Lomtadze had bought the club. Astana finished 6th in the Kazakhstan Premier Division, and play in the nation’s capital.
It now means that Wycombe Wanderers join a select group alongside Manchester City, Chelsea, the Red Bull franchise and Crystal Palace in becoming clubs part of a multi-club system, with some level of strategic involvement between various clubs.
This is not entirely new even within the English Football Leagues. Waterford Town FC and Fleetwood Town FC were owned and operated by the now disgraced Andy Pilley (with both now being chaired by his son). The two clubs co-operated in regards to transfers, with a large number of players going between the two clubs to mixed effect, with Waterford being promoted to the Irish Premier Division while Fleetwood were relegated to League Two.
But what does this actually mean for Wycombe? Unlike other groups, where players are often shifted between teams to aid development or avoid work permit issues (Manchester City’s Savio was initially signed by French club Troyes, loaned to Spanish Club Girona, then sold to Manchester City, all operated by the City Football Group), Wycombe and Astana are unlikely to be loaning players to each other given the competitive and geographic differences between the Leagues, but instead the relationship will be one of joint involvement in Youth Development and Academy output.
When Mikheil Lomtadze bought Wycombe in 2024, one of the key points raised by Lomtadze was “We aim to re-open and build a leading high-performance academy which will become an essential part of our long-term strategy of developing a club that consistently performs at the top level.”, while Zhenis Astana’s release on their website similarly states a similar attention to the clubs youth academy.
“My dream is to create a world-class professional children’s football academy in Kazakhstan and England, where the most talented young footballers, future stars, can be nurtured. Tuition will be completely free. Young athletes will have the opportunity to train with leading specialists from our country and the birthplace of football, England.”
This lofty ideal likely marks out what will be the modus operandi for the Lomtadze Group so to speak, where a brand new academy system in Kazakhstan will draw upon the decades of knowledge and professionalism built into the English football system to create a state of the art academy for Astana, while it’s best candidates may choose to join Wycombe’s Academy Squads or even Development Squad to give them experience in English Football.
Of course, there will be other issues at play, particularly work permit issues. These can be alleviated two different ways. One would need the players looking to join Wycombe’s Academy to either play first team football in Kazakhstan or in Kazakhstan’s Underage National Teams to gain the clearance necessary to gain a work permit. Secondly, Wycombe’s “ESC” slots can be used to grant players a chance to join Wycombe, albeit as a League One club the Chairboys would only get two of these (Increased to Four in the Championship), both are which are currently occupied by Anders Hagelskjaer and Magnus Westergaard.
And that doesn’t eliminate the fact that at present, Wycombe are unable to sign any overseas player under the age of 18.
There is much still to be laid out about Lomtadze’s plans for his youth academy setup. Only time will tell over the functionality of the system.
