Today Bayer Leverkusen must win against Qarabag Ağdam to reach the quarter-finals of the Europa League – a club whose homeland is in ruins. And whose rise has a lot to do with the autocracy of Azerbaijan.
To explain who or what the Azerbaijani club Qarabag Ağdam is, you need to look at the map: From Ağdam it is 80 kilometers south to the Iranian border, 300 kilometers to the east is the Caspian Sea and to the west you land at 400 kilometers in eastern Turkey.
But the city from which this surprise club comes, against which Bayer Leverkusen only fought for a draw in injury time in the first leg of the Europa League, is not only important because of its exotic location: it no longer exists, Ağdam is a ghost town. Once 30,000 people lived there, but then Ağdam became a field of rubble through which shepherds drove their flocks.