“I’m really interested to see what happens,” said Bellamy. “The travel, the pitch – it’s so exciting. This is why we’re here. We want to go to a major tournament.

“It’s supposed to be hard. These group games are always hard, but they have to be because we’re in the European stage to qualify for what we see as the major tournament.

“We’ve managed to earn the right three times now out of the last five tournaments, and we aren’t going away. We want it to be this one. If it isn’t, it’s going to be the next one. We love the hardness of it. I expect a really hard game.”

This is the furthest Wales’ men have travelled for a qualifying match in their history, though the women’s side made the 7,000-mile round trip to the same stadium, Astana Arena, in 2022.

That distance has not deterred Welsh supporters, as more than 1,000 have made the journey to Kazakhstan’s capital city.

This is a huge country, the world’s ninth largest by land area and spanning two continents.

But in footballing terms, Kazakhstan are minnows. They are ranked 114th in the world, 83 places below Wales.

That said, Kazakhstan provided Wales with stubborn opposition in their opening fixture of this campaign in Cardiff in March, scoring their first competitive goal since 2023 to equalise before eventually losing 3-1 to Bellamy’s men.

Four Kazakh squad members were also part of the Kairat Almaty team who knocked Celtic out of Champions League qualifying last month.

“That bodes well for the future, but we’re in the here and now,” said Bellamy. “No matter what, it’s going to be a difficult game. This is a nice challenge.

“Playing them at home in Cardiff was a good challenge as well, how they set up, how they look to counter-attack. They spent a long time without the ball and that usually breaks teams earlier than it did. We call it heart. I admired it.

“For us, do we have the quality on the day? That’s the most important. Have we prepared well? Are we able to adapt? We’ll have to take the game to them.

“Whatever the circumstances, we adapt. That allows you to be excited about every game.”