Uzbekistan's World Cup dream realised: Tears, near-misses and making amends for ‘stolen goals'

New York Times

6 days ago

As the enormity of what they had achieved started to sink in, the emotions of Uzbekistan's football squad became too much to bear. This was the greatest moment of all of their careers. The players were crying, the staff were crying, even the unused substitutes were in tears.
Heroic goalkeeper Utkir Yusupov, who made several outstanding saves including one in the eighth minute of added time, was on his knees, blubbing like the rest of them.
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Yusupov plays his club football for Foolad in Iran's Persian Gulf Pro League. Yes, this is not a team of superstars but, by grinding out a 0-0 draw away to the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, they have accomplished what many back home thought may never happen — Uzbekistan have qualified for the World Cup.
When the field for the finals was increased from 32 to 48 nations for the 2026 edition, being hosted in the United States, Canada and Mexico, there were likely to be some unusual names thrown into the mix and a debutant or two.
Uzbekistan fit that bill, but they have not qualified due to the tournament's expansion — they would have made it if the format had been the same as in Qatar four years ago, due to an excellent qualification campaign, losing just one of 15 matches.
In fact, for a football-mad country, this is long overdue.
And boy, have they had some near-misses along the way.
'Abdukodir Khusanov is at Manchester City, but undoubtedly more players will go to Europe — we have a lot of talented footballers.'
Uzbekistan may not be a footballing hotbed — yet — but Guy Kiala, their football association's technical director, believes that could be about to change.
'You can see that, over the years, European clubs have sent their scouts to Africa, then to South America, then lots to Asia, but they have overlooked Uzbekistan,' he tells The Athletic. 'That will change, and for sure we'll have more players heading to Europe now, there's no doubt about that.'
Reaching next year's World Cup is about to shine a very bright spotlight on what Uzbekistan has to offer the football world.
Up until now, the country has probably been better known for its wrestling prowess — Artur Taymazov won Olympic wrestling golds in 2004, 2008 and 2012, although the latter two were stripped from him following positive drug tests.
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Hmm, what else? Well, they had a decent heavyweight boxer called Ruslan Chagaev, who was WBA world champion for a bit and went nine rounds with Wladimir Klitschko in 2009 before it was stopped.
Oh, and Akgul Amanmuradova was one of the tallest female tennis players in history at 6ft 3in (190cm) and reached a highest ranking of 50th in the world.
But yeah, that's about it.
As well as the above sports, they like their ice hockey in Uzbekistan, or their chess, or their judo, but what they really love is football. While your average European won't know much about Uzbek football, in their part of the world, they are the opposite of unknown football minnows.
Yes, Rivaldo played there for a while, during the weird travelling phase of the end of his career that also included a spell in Angola and yes, former Valencia and Inter coach Hector Cuper managed the national team late in his career, but more importantly, in Central Asian football — admittedly not the biggest field — they are the dominant force and have a proud record of having qualified for every Asian Cup (the region's Euros or Copa America) they've entered since they gained independence from the old USSR in 1991.
The country's citizenry of almost 40 million makes it the most populated country in Central Asia, which is a vast area located south of Russia and north of Iran and Afghanistan that also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and is around half the size of Europe in terms of land, but has a population around a tenth of Europe's.
But while they have been fanatical about their football for many decades, World Cup qualification has proved elusive, missing out by the most desperate of tight margins on no fewer than three occasions.
The one they still talk about today happened as they tried to get to the 2006 tournament in Germany, and was hugely controversial.
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This was the time Uzbekistan were at their highest point in the FIFA rankings (45th — they're currently 57th, having dropped as low as 109th in 2010).
Uzbekistan reached a two-legged final play-off against Bahrain, with its winners going through to a further inter-continental play-off against a side from the Concacaf (North and Central America and the Caribbean) region.
They won the first leg 1-0 at home, which would have been 2-0 if they hadn't had a penalty ruled out because one of their attacking players encroached in the penalty area. However, the Japanese referee, instead of saying the penalty should be re-taken, awarded a free kick to Bahrain, which is an incorrect interpretation of the game's laws. FIFA ordered the match to be replayed, starting at 0-0, because the ref had made a 'technical error'.
'The referee stole our second goal and now FIFA is stealing our first goal,' Alisher Nikimbaev, the Uzbekistan Football Federation's head of international relations, said at the time.
You can guess what happened next.
The replayed first leg finished 1-1, and it was then 0-0 in Bahrain, meaning Uzbekistan were out on the since-scrapped away goals rule. That Bahrain would narrowly miss out, 2-1, to Trinidad & Tobago in that inter-confederation play-off was no consolation to the enraged Uzbeks.
They came even closer in qualifying for Brazil 2014, missing out on goal difference, with a 1-0 defeat away at South Korea (who went to the World Cup instead) in the penultimate round of fixtures proving crucial. Then, for 2018, they were just two points shy of heading to the finals in neighbouring Russia but drew 0-0 at home against South Korea in their final match when a win would have seen them through.
It's a pretty solid history of coming up just short when it really matters.
So what's been different this time for Uzbekistan, the world's first double-landlocked country (ie, one surrounded by countries which are themselves landlocked) to qualify for the World Cup?
After all, this is not a squad full of exported talents plying their trade in Europe; in fact, the majority (14) of the current 25-man group play in the domestic league.
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There are two notable exceptions; their captain, striker, record goalscorer and talisman is Eldor Shomurodov, Roma's workmanlike striker who chipped in with seven goals in all competitions last season as they finished fifth in Serie A.
And then there's new national hero Khusanov, whose rise to one of the best teams in the world in Manchester City has been meteoric, from Uzbek youth football to the Champions League in just two years, via a spell at French side Lens.
Probably the only other player on the level of Shomurodov and Khusanov is Abbosbek Fayzullaev, a dynamic attacking midfielder who plays for CSKA Moscow.
Fayzullaev, like Khusanov, is only 21 years old and has the talent to compete at a much higher level. He has twice been named Uzbekistan player of the year, as well as in the 2023 Asian Cup's team of the tournament and voted 'Discovery of the season' in the 2023-24 Russian Premier League.
Elsewhere in the team, it's generally been a dogged, organised team effort, with just 11 goals conceded in those 15 qualification matches.
And yet, despite the unprecedented success of the national team, there is already one eye on the next generation coming through.
Eighteen months ago, Uzbekistan's under-17 team stunned their England counterparts at the age group's World Cup, beating them 2-1 in the round of 16 before narrowly losing 1-0 to France in the quarter-finals. Earlier that year, their under-20 side also reached the knockout phase of their World Cup, having won the Asian equivalent on home soil a couple of months before (with Fayzullaev named player of the tournament).
And last year, the under-23s were in the Olympics in France (having qualified as the runners-up to Japan in the age group's Asian Cup in 2023), which wasn't just the first time Uzbekistan had played football at the Games, but any team sport at any Olympics ever.
Timur Kapadze managed that team, and it is he who has now guided the full national side to the World Cup.
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Kapadze, 43, took charge at the start of this year, replacing former Slovenia manager Srecko Katanec, who had to step down for health reasons. 'It was not ideal to change the coach of the winning team, but the players have adapted well,' says technical director Kiala, a Belgian who has had similar roles at clubs in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
When Kiala was hired at around the time of that shock under-17s victory over England in late 2023, he found a football country with plenty of talent, but without the structure and the support to realise that talent. For a start, they didn't even have a technical director before him. There also wasn't a long-term development plan, and while there were football academies stretched across the huge country, they were being run by the government.
Kiala and his staff brought these under the control of the football federation instead, changing what was mostly a social enterprise for the youngsters into a proper academy system. Grassroots kickabouts became actual matches between the very best talents from each region.
'We always had talent, but now there is consistency in identifying that talent,' says Kiala, whose team of staff are well backed with government support. 'So now it won't be just 'one good year' of players. Now we're looking at very good talents constantly coming through.
'Even at grassroots level, Uzbek players are very good technically. So how do we exploit that? Our training sessions are now focused on those things and on playing offensive, creative football, which suits us better.'
Kiala also looked to change the mentality of the whole football structure.
'One of the things I found was that the players and the coaches didn't really have a winning mindset,' he adds. 'It showed in the way we played — very defensive, thinking other teams were better, 'We're only Uzbekistan'.
'So it needed a change of mindset and a more progressive playing style. We're more offensive now, more connected. And throughout our motto is, 'Our desire to win must always be bigger than the fear of losing'. Again, that's something we've put in place. And people have started to believe in themselves.
'We can't forget it's a young football country; the football association only came in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. It's also a huge country; 38 million people; big, vast regions which are far from the capital. And football is the number one sport. There is lots of potential.'
That potential is finally starting to be realised.
The 34,000-capacity Milliy Stadium in the capital Tashkent will be full on Tuesday when Uzbekistan host Qatar in their final qualifier, which will now become a national party.
'Tomorrow, we need to make history,' winger Jaloliddin Masharipov had said ahead of his country's big night in Abu Dhabi.'It should be a day of joy for the Uzbek people. We have come this far for a reason — the time has come to qualify for the World Cup.
'Our goal is to make all of Uzbekistan proud.'
They have certainly done that.
Next stop, the World Cup.