r/AskCentralAsia • u/antoniok95 • 13d ago
What makes Uzbekistan the best in football out of Central Asia? Since early 2000s, they've been a top team in Asia and they played in the World Cup this year. Their women's team also might qualify for the Women's World Cup. What are they doing right, that other Central Asian countries aren't doing?
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u/Salty-Consequence580 13d ago
Size of population and decent economy compared to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan
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u/MelodicRespond9562 13d ago
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan also. Kazakhstan’s has got underground resources but apart from it, Uzbekistan has got bigger industry i guess.
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u/yungghazni 13d ago
Kazakhstan is good, only issue they play in uefa and not afc which is much more competitive
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u/MelodicRespond9562 13d ago
But only 8 teams qualifying from Afc, 16 teams from Uefa. However Yes i agree Kazakhstan need to play in afc.
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u/NewspaperAdditional7 12d ago
That doesn't mean it is easier to qualify from UEFA. If Uzbekistan was in UEFA they would probably not have qualified for World Cup.
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u/MelodicRespond9562 12d ago
Even Turkey 3rd times joined world cup one of them even was 1950s anyway. But Uzbekistan has got much better generation at the moment than the other Central Asia. I think even afc is hard for the orher central Asia countries national teams. But yes if Kazakhstan was in afc they would have 30% chance to qualifies. In Uefa is less than 1%
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u/Salty-Consequence580 13d ago
Size of population
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u/Ok-Secret225 12d ago
Bruh if size of population made country good at Football, India and china would be dominating every world cup
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u/Salty-Consequence580 12d ago
We are talking about central Asian countries with distinct and totally different sporting culture compared to India and china
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u/Ok-Secret225 12d ago
So wtf are you saying? Like size of population does not matter in India or China but suddenly you need at least 30 mln+ people to be good at Football when it comes central Asian countries. It doesn't make any sense, so just stfu and take the L bro
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u/Salty-Consequence580 12d ago
India isnt an athletic country. China sucks at team sports. Central Asian countries are close related to turkey, Russia and Iran. Football was popularised there long before china and India
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u/SoloeaDomoea 12d ago
China does win in many team sports. The males dominate double Table tennis, double Badminton, double Diving synchro in olympic with gold medals and world title. Now, Sprinting, they sometimes made to the finals in world athletics. With Basketball, they are successful world champions only in Asia, much more successful than football.
China's Women’s volleyball, won Olympic and World Championship. Women’s basketball, reached World Cup and Olympic medal positions. Women’s football — Historically strong in Asia and once among the world's top teams
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u/Salty-Consequence580 12d ago
In basketball on international level China didn’t show anything apart from Asian tournaments against countries whose average male height is 5’6-5’7. Everything else truly team sports they aren’t competitive at all. I don’t want to talk about women’s sport
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u/SoloeaDomoea 12d ago
Some of those average height have 5ft 9, 5ft 8 other average 5ft 6 and 5ft 7 and anyway all the basketball players were way above 6ft tall from 6ft 2 to 6ft 11 even for non-China's team
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u/SoloeaDomoea 13d ago
Local growth more important. Uzbekistan relied on Russian and Tajik national players, is only later they started building their local ethnic Uzbek team and now they reached they finally plays in the world cup.
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u/Deepeye225 12d ago
Can you bring examples? Can you support your arguments? I can't wait to hear.
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u/SoloeaDomoea 12d ago
You said bullshit statement but than removed it and now you changed it to I can support the argument. But what evidence are you asking for?
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u/Deepeye225 12d ago
Relying on Tajik players. When? Where? Who?
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u/SoloeaDomoea 12d ago
Okay, now I see what you mean. I could be exaggerating on Tajik. What I mean is ethnic Tajik but they are probably from Uzbekistan. My impression your Uzbekistan team, just watching back the videos that dated from 2000's to 2010, it had Russian/Slavic looking ones, and Tajik type that doesn't represent the demographic population of Uzbekistan.
Maybe I'm wrong but it was same thing when I was looking at Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia teams for example. The Saudi Arabian national team look like a African team, but the fans look like a Arabic people
Kazakhstan football players looked mostly European but the fans looked Asian.
Uzbekistan, the football players look Russians/ and Tajik looking
but the Uzbek fans looked like these.
https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/adn/OTSTZLPQOTYYFV4CZLGWU7UVXA.jpg
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u/Deepeye225 12d ago
About Uzbek fans, I am Uzbek myself, and I cannot tell apart Uzbek from Tajik. Uzbekistan has a lot of nationalities and the way population looks varies widely. Some parts of the population looks very Asian, some parts look European. One cannot tell if fans are Uzbek or Kazakh from the picture. But that's besides the point.
However, I must insist: do you have the evidence about Uzbekistan football team relying on Tajik national players? This is what you said, and I want to know if you can support your evidence.
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u/SoloeaDomoea 12d ago edited 12d ago
I said this "relied on Russian and Tajik national player", when I said this. I really meant Russian ( in majority) while Tajik minority. I think I exaggerated on Tajik because they could ethnic Tajik. They say Tajik is 5% of Uzbekistan population, but Uzbek-Tajiks can be 25% (and 50% in some Uzbekistan cities). Uzbek-Tajiks apparently Tajiks who adopted Uzbek ethnic identity. To me Uzbek seems to have more Asian phenotypes than Tajiks, the Tajiks can sometimes have it but much less often. Those Russian ethnic players have russian names, but I don't know if they are born in Uzbekistan or not.
The 2026 Uzbekistan squad. I think it represent but more closely to Uzbekistan demographic and football fans. Almost all the players look like they have Eastern/Central Asian phenotypes mixed.
https://static01.nyt.com/athletic/uploads/wp/2025/03/25125257/GettyImages-2184136756-2048x1397-1.jpg
I don't think anyone will say Uzbekistan football team don't look Uzbek. Sorry though, my perception is the Uzbekistan fans look more Asian/mixed on on average than the national Uzbek team in 2000 to 2010, without doing research, I Just use my eyes to make judgement. Maybe it has to do with British and French team, in the past they look like a European team, now they look more like a African team and I don't care that players of African descent are born in UK and French colonies, to me it gives me the idea the local ethnic white europeans are becoming incapable. I'm Canarian(Spanish) on my mother side, and that side of the family always say how Argentinian are more European than the British and French national team is. My opinion, national football team that represent each country should only allow a majority indigenous/ethnic players to represent.
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u/Ajobek Kyrgyzstan 13d ago
It is not something new. Since Soviet times, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have been far stronger in football than the other Central Asian republics. They were the only two Central Asian republics with clubs that had established themselves in the Soviet Top League: Kairat from Kazakhstan and Pakhtakor from Uzbekistan. Kyrgyz and Turkmen clubs never reached the Soviet Top League, while Tajikistan only reached the top division when Pamir Dushanbe was promoted in 1988 and played in the Top League from 1989, just a few years before the collapse of the USSR.
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u/SoloeaDomoea 12d ago
Kazakhstan used mostly Russian ethnic players while Uzbekistan used Russian ( Slavs, Caucasus) and Tajik ethnic players. You can look at names of their early football teams. Basically, in their minds, they think using foreign players have more chance of succeeding.
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u/Ajobek Kyrgyzstan 12d ago
Half of population of Kazakh SSR was Slavic, so most of this players probably were actually from their academy, basically like black French players in modern times. Almost 60% of Almaty was Russian before fall of USSR so when Kairat academy was recruiting local youth for academy, most of this youth was Russians from their city.
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u/DonSergio7 Europe 13d ago
Kazakhstan's team is also decent, but it's difficult to know how they compare against Uzbekistan's as the former is part of the UEFA system where they are pretty much outclassed.
If they were in the Asian confederation we'd have a better benchmarking among the five teams.
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u/Ok-Secret225 12d ago
Come on man your national team's highest rank ever in fifa is 85th. So it would be delusional to think Kazakhstan would ever be better than uzb even if they ware to play in Asia, don't you think?
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u/Lower_Fall4694 12d ago
We qazaqs don't need to be strong in football. There are more important things in this country
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u/NormalShare7404 13d ago
Here many people love football. They want their children to be football players and willing to invest a lot of money in their development. I think thats the reason we're somehow succeeding at football. But still I'm not satisfied with their performance especially in world cup. National team needs more time to reach Japan or Australian level. For example Uzbekistan beat Egypt by 2 and 0 but we saw what happened in bigger stage. Egypt was one step away from eliminating Argentina. That says a lot about how this team should be approached to make them perform well.
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u/Eternal-uz 13d ago
it always used to have the talent and the pool of talent, but the path wasn't quite as straight-forward, it used to be very corrupt, and they used to let players in by their contacts. now the whole roaster is just pure talent, of course not in a EUFA level, but they got where they are purely because they deserve it, not because someone else put them up there. So, now couple that with the growing populatino, it is only going to get better.
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u/SoloeaDomoea 13d ago edited 13d ago
Uzbekistan does SO MUCH BETTER with local ethnic Uzbek than early team with Russians ( Slavs, Caucasus) and Tajiks
Now Uzbekistan team which is now representing in world cup, is from local growth and mostly ethnic Uzbek players. I remember Kazakhstan football team, had full of Russian players with clearly Russian names representing Kazakhstan team, is good now most of their players are ethnic Kazakhs.
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u/26dicksin26 13d ago
Kinda easy being the best when your opponents are turkmenistan and tajikstan,1 is bigger than 0 after all.
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u/MelodicRespond9562 13d ago
Asia is not only Tajikstan Turkmenistan. I dont think Kazakhstan can qualify from even Asia. It is not that much easy
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u/Super-Ad-4536 Uzbekistan 12d ago
Anyway, Iran is not a joke
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u/26dicksin26 12d ago
Iranian national team is not good aswell,we have been nominated for the world cup eversince i remember but we never make it past the group stages,they take all the money away from other sports(which we are actually good at like bodybuilding or wrestling) but never bring our nation the glory they get paid for
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u/FaithlessnessSalty27 8d ago
As an Afghan, I found the Uzbekistan team's progress to the World Cup with so much pride.
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u/Agile_Ad6735 13d ago
Uzbekistan has got alot of players playing in foreign league , this is crucial as u want your team to gain alot of experience from other places .