Dawn of the White Wolves

Through fires of conquest, tragedy and empire, football in Uzbekistan survived. Now, a forward-thinking crew of scouts and coaches are ushering their country towards a golden age.

In this special, narrative epic, Neel Shelat chronicles the fall and rise of one of world football’s most remarkable underdogs - and talks to the people engineering it.

This is the story of the White Wolves.

When FIFA updated their global rankings in December 2010, eyes in Uzbekistan glanced up. What they found made sorry reading. The men’s national team had dropped out of the top 100 yet again, but that was hardly a surprise. Their highest ever ranking was 45th, in 2007 - a new dawn which, over time, proved false.

The fans, for their part, were not exactly up in arms. Cynical as ever, many were anticipating the drop-off. Once you understand their history, it is hard to blame them. Conquest, dominion, an air disaster, the fall of an empire - Uzbekistan’s story and by extension, the story of its football, has the taste of an Homeric epic.

Today, Uzbekistan lie 64th - still below their peak. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find Uzbek football is better than ever. Young domestic talent is slowly making its way into the world’s best competitions, and the league is growing in strength. As the FIFA World Cup expands to a 48-team format in 2026, Uzbekistan are now among the favourites to qualify from Asia and finally reach the world’s biggest stage.

This is a story of history shaping football and football shaping history. From ashes, Uzbekistan have built their White Wolves - a footballing nation marching towards its future with purpose, and youth at its heart.

1. FROM ASHES (1992 - 1999)

The concept of Uzbekistan – or more accurately, O’zbekiston – is relatively new. Indeed, the Uzbek identity is only a few centuries old, with reference to it not emerging before the 16th century.

The region of Uzbekistan, though, has been of global importance for millennia. Modern-day Uzbek cities such as Bukhara, Khiva and most notably of all, Samarkand – now a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its entirety – were key stops along the Silk Road, with Samarkand gaining particular prominence as an approximate halfway point.

The region has seen many a ruler over the ages. The list is a historical rogue’s gallery: Alexander the Great, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mongols, and Timur (branded by some as the father of Uzbekistan). Its recent history, though, begins with the Russian conquest in Central Asia and consequent annexation into the Soviet Union. In 1924, the USSR established the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, comprising all parts of modern-day Uzbekistan as well as Tajikistan (the two were separated after just a few years).

Football was introduced to Uzbekistan in the early 20th century by soldiers of the Russian Empire. In 1912, residents of the city of Kokand in the Ferghana region formed what is now regarded as the oldest Central Asian football club. Among their very first opponents were teams comprised of Russian soldiers, and their successes led to the spread of football around the Ferghana Valley and eventually across Uzbekistan.

Those clued up on the history of professional football will understand the immense strength of the Soviet Top League, but Uzbekistan played a very small part in it. Only one team from the region ever made it to the Soviet top flight: Pakhtakor (whose name literally translates to “cotton growers”) from the capital Tashkent, who remain the country’s most successful club to this day. Only a select few Uzbek clubs could even climb above the third tier, and the regional Uzbek championship was an amateur tournament that effectively sat at the fifth tier of Soviet football.

So, when Uzbekistan finally gained independence from the USSR in 1991, the newborn Uzbek top flight was almost entirely comprised of teams from the lower divisions of Soviet football, all of whom had extremely limited budgets. Obviously, such a league did not show promise as the incubator of a competitive national team.

And the nation had still not healed from an earlier tragedy. In August 1979, a plane carrying 17 Pakhtakor players and 161 civilians took off on a routine journey to Belarus. Pakhtakor were due to face Dinamo Minsk; the game would never happen. In the skies above Ukraine, Pakhtakor’s plane struck another, killing everyone on board. In a characteristic display, the Soviet media failed to report the truth for a week. The Uzbek capital existed in a haze of confused grief for that time, piecing together their heartbreak from fragments of foreign radio and whispered rumours.

The nation had been robbed of the heart of their very first national team and coaching generation. The wound would take decades to scar.

The nature of Uzbekistan’s independence a decade later only made matters worse. Unlike most countries, Uzbekistan’s independence was not a direct and immediate product of their own campaigning. Of course, there had been nationalist movements in the region since the Russian conquest, but they were brutally quelled – particularly during Stalin’s rule. Uzbekistan’s declaration of independence was, by all accounts, a rather reluctant response to the August coup in Moscow in 1991, which ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union.

So, when Uzbekistan formally gained independence later that year, they were not entirely prepared. Soviet policies had hardly helped develop a sustainable economy in the region, so Uzbekistan’s early years were overshadowed by economic decline and a falling GDP – as was the case for all CIS countries.

Football naturally took a backseat. Although the Uzbekistan Football Federation was established under Soviet rule in 1946, it was three years after independence, in 1994, that it was reorganised and became a member of FIFA and the AFC as the Uzbekistan Football Association (UFA). Later that year, the country would surprisingly enjoy their first major sporting success as an independent nation at the Asian Games. They won the gold medal in the men’s football tournament, defeating Saudi Arabia, South Korea and China with just a 17-player squad in a run known colloquially as the “Miracle of 1994”.

The miracle was not sustained beyond the tournament in Japan, though, as the team’s lack of quality, resources and investment began to degrade results. They lost all but two of their matches in 1995 and 1996, slumping to their worst-ever FIFA ranking at #119. Nobody was pleased, but nobody was particularly fussed, either. There were bigger and far more important fish to fry in a newborn nation just finding its feet.

2. A NEW HOPE (2000)

As Uzbekistan prepared for their second-ever men’s Asian Cup in 2000, hopes were muted. Their debut at the tournament four years prior had seen them exit in the group stage, but they did bow out with heads held high courtesy of a two-goal opening day win over China. Even qualifying for the tournament was an achievement – particularly because they overturned a four-goal deficit from the first leg of their qualifying play-off against Tajikistan.

Another set of respectable performances in a tough group with Japan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar was all that was expected of the White Wolves in Lebanon, but that was not to be. A 1-1 draw in their tournament opener against Qatar marked a good start, but all went downhill thereafter. Would-be champions Japan thrashed them 8-1 in their second group game, and with confidence dented, Uzbekistan went on to lose by five goals against Saudi Arabia in their third match. To this day, 2000 remains their worst-ever performance at the Asian Cup.

While expectations back home were low, such a disastrous performance was not deemed acceptable. There followed a significant overhaul in the UFA’s management, with the new decision-makers prepared to take a different approach to their predecessors, who rather neglected grassroots development by all accounts.

Since the latter half of the Soviet period, football has been by far the most popular sport among the Uzbek people. With a population of about 25 million in 2000, a lack of interest or talent could not be cited as excuses for poor performance. The issue was weak infrastructure and paltry investment - so that was where the new UFA chose to focus.

Members of the Asian Federation have recently poured money into their domestic leagues to both attract foreign talent and improve conditions for home-grown talent - this is the Qatari route, the Saudi route, the Chinese route. Uzbekistan has no such resource. What they did instead was more measured, more long-termist, and is today beginning to bear its fruit.

3. SLOW BOIL (2001 - 2009)

In 1997, Vadim Shadimatov returned to his home in Uzbekistan after spending years in Kazakhstan as a player and then a youth coach. He decided to apply for a coaching license under the UFA, and during his exams, received an offer to join the federation as a specialist in children’s and youth football. At the time, the federation did not have a separate department focusing on youth development, but when it was eventually formed in 2004, Shadimatov became its first head.

His initial years in the role were marred by financial constraints. Alisher Nikimbaev, who worked at the UFA in various roles from 1997 to 2011, recounted the poor track record of Uzbek youth teams through the 1990s when we spoke over the phone in May.

“In the 90s, youth teams from Uzbekistan never qualified for the AFC Youth Championship,” he told me. After their fourth failure ahead of the 31st edition of the tournament in 2000, the coach requested the federation set up an international training camp for the team to prepare for the 2002 AFC Youth Championship qualifiers. According to Nikimbaev, the general secretary of the federation said, “If you find a sponsor, you will travel. The federation does not have any money for foreign training camps.”

After the disastrous 2000 Asian Cup and the overhaul in the federation’s management, though, things began to change. In his own words, Shadimatov’s initial role entailed the organisation of (youth) competitions as well as the development and strengthening of infrastructure of specialised football boarding schools (youth academies). After the new management took charge, he saw an increase in funding. Training camps for the youth national teams, both domestically and abroad, also became more frequent.

As mentioned, such a development process always takes a long time to fully materialise. Uzbekistan did not win a title at any level for over a decade, but for the key stakeholders involved, the rewards of this shift in approach were instant. The White Wolves’ U-19 team not only qualified for the 2002 AFC Youth Championship but made it all the way to the semi-final, qualifying for the 2003 FIFA World Youth Championship where they raised Uzbekistan’s tricolour for the very first time at a FIFA event.

There was a lot more work to be done. While the early generations of Uzbek youth teams showed promise, very few of the players went on to make a lasting impact at a significant international level in their senior careers. The transition from youth talent to senior level is so difficult for a myriad of reasons, many of which Uzbekistan had major systemic failures in.

The key figures in ensuring talented youngsters have flourishing senior careers are the coaches – not at youth level, but those in charge of the senior sides. Unfortunately, the quality of coaching in Uzbekistan was not of the highest order. The financial constraints faced by the country post-independence left a very limited pool of professional coaches working, with others either moving abroad in search of better opportunities or giving up altogether. Those that did remain had to adopt a win-now mentality in order to survive, as the pressure for results was quite high from the owners, whose budgets and financial capacities also depended on the team’s performances. So, youth development was far from a priority.

Besides developing infrastructure and youth academies, one of the key elements of Shadimatov’s role also included the improvement of coaching programs in the country. After the 2000 Asian Cup, the UFA adopted the AFC coaching license programs. Since then, Uzbekistan has produced scores of AFC Pro-Diploma holders as well as supporting applicants from other countries.

Equally, it was important to set up pathways for players to go from academies to senior teams at professional clubs in the Uzbek Super League – the top flight. Shadimatov and his team worked with clubs around the country to help them develop their own youth academies, with early adopters including Mash’al of Mubarek, Bunyodkor, Nasaf Qarshi and Metallurg Bekabad.

Although many of these clubs have never lifted a major trophy themselves, their contribution to youth development laid the foundation for the national teams’ recent successes at various levels. Such is the nature of youth development.

4. THE NEW WOLVES (2010 - 2018)

With youth academies established around the country, the net cast to find promising youngsters grew wide. Talent got better access to much-improved infrastructure and training facilities as well as holistic education in these football schools and academies, ultimately improving the quality of the national teams. The generation born towards the latter half of the 1990s were the first to get the full benefit of the concerted national effort to improve youth development, and they reaped the rewards.

In 2010, the young White Wolves reached the final of the AFC U-16 Championship, qualifying for the FIFA U-17 World Cup for the first time ever. Although they lost to North Korea at the final hurdle, the next generation would go one better in the subsequent edition of the tournament in 2012 by defeating Japan on penalties in the final, thus winning Uzbekistan’s first-ever AFC trophy.

Since then, Uzbekistan have consistently appeared at continental tournaments. In the last 20 editions of the U-16, U-20, U-23 and senior Asian Cups combined, the White Wolves have a very impressive qualification rate of 90 percent.

The U-20s impressed in the mid-2010s with back-to-back World Cup appearances, but it was the U-23s who brought home the next trophy. After failing to get past the groups of their first two Asian Cups, they put together a brilliant campaign in which they scored four goals past both Japan and South Korea in the knockouts and went on to win the 2018 U-23 Asian Cup.

At this point, pretty much everything was going well for the Uzbek youth development project. The only issue left was that of transfers of the country’s best youth talents, whose potential would likely not be fulfilled in the relatively weaker domestic league. However, there were many instances of clubs demanding outlandish transfer fees in the millions of dollars for such players, causing deals to fall through.

Historically, most Uzbek players plying their trade outside the country could be found in Russia or another CIS country. In recent years, Türkiye has emerged as a fairly popular destination due to their cultural similarities and relatively strong league. Alternatively, some players have travelled to different parts of Asia to play in leagues where they can become marquee foreign signings. The road to one of Europe’s top leagues, though, is far from well-trodden.

Having spent the last three and a half years in Serie A, Eldor Shomurodov is arguably the most popular Uzbek footballer at the moment. The striker came through the aforementioned Mash’al youth academy in Mubarek and impressed for Bunyodkor in the Super League, before moving to Russian club FC Rostov in 2017. It was from there that he would go to Italy, where his exploits have made him the poster boy for Uzbekistan’s next big target.

5. OLYMPIC DREAMS (2019 - 2024)

The most notable Uzbek to take to a football field is not a player. He is a referee - namely Ravshan Ermatov, the man who holds the world record for officiating the most World Cup matches (11). Ermatov was by far the best referee Uzbekistan ever produced and was named Asia’s best four years in a row around 2010, but he hung up his whistle in 2019 and decided to contribute to the sport in a different way.

Soon after retiring, Ermatov was named the first-ever Vice-President of the Uzbekistan Football Association. In this post, he has taken a very active role in solidifying the development of football in the country. He has worked to ensure that the improvement in facilities continues, as well as attempting to utilise this developed infrastructure to its fullest.

Crucially, Ermatov has ensured that football retains the number one national priority in sporting development by subsequently taking up other posts - including becoming the first Deputy Minister of Sports of Uzbekistan and being elected as the first deputy chairman of the National Olympic Committee (NOC).

Ermatov’s first big sporting target has been for Uzbekistan to qualify for the Olympic football tournament – something they had never managed, despite their impressive recent track record across youth levels. Soon after he joined the NOC, they established a new football club, bluntly named FK Olympic, in Tashkent.

The badge made their intentions clear. Olympic essentially served as a year-round training camp for the U-23 national team (who, of course, participate in the men’s Olympic football tournament), as their squad was solely comprised of Uzbek U-23 players. Critically, though, they got great exposure by playing senior football in the professional pyramid from day one.

The man appointed to take charge of this club was Timur Kapadze, who naturally also became the coach of the national U-23s. As a player, Kapadze was one of the most successful Uzbek football has ever seen: he won 12 Uzbek Super League titles across four different clubs (with at least one at each) – Neftchi Fergana, Pakhtakor, Bunyodkor and Lokomotiv Tashkent. Between those achievements, he also enjoyed stints in South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan.

Just a couple of months after retiring as a player, Kapadze found himself the interim head coach of the national team, between the dismissal of Samvel Babayan and the appointment of Héctor Cúper. That was his only experience as a head coach - he went on to serve as an assistant at Lokomotiv before being hired by Olympic.

His side began in the Pro League (the second tier) in 2021, finishing third and entering the promotion/relegation play-offs. Their opponents were none other than Mash’al, whom they defeated to book a berth in the top-flight for 2022. They finished a very solid upper mid-table 6th in their debut Super League season, followed with a 9th-place finish in 2023. Quite clearly, they were more than capable of holding their own in a senior top-flight, so an U-23 Asian Cup – which doubled as AFC’s Olympic qualifiers – should not have been a problem.

While all other Asian leagues continued as normal, the Uzbek Super League stopped for a whole month during this tournament not least because one of its teams was away, but also because many other sides lost key players. The entire nation was watching with high hopes when the U-23s landed in Qatar this April for the 2024 U-23 Asian Cup. The club that contributed the highest number of players to the squad was, of course, FK Olympic, but they did not form the majority. Their impressive performances had seen many youngsters get signed by other senior clubs, with some sending them back on loan to continue their development. The breakdown of the squad was such: seven players from FK Olympic, 11 from other Uzbek Super League clubs, and five who were already plying their trade abroad.

Since the senior Asian Cup had also been held in Qatar just a couple of months prior to this tournament, the U-23 Asian Cup did not receive a great deal of international fanfare. There were no real travelling contingents of supporters save for the neighbouring Saudis, while diaspora communities from places like Indonesia and Malaysia provided good support to their home countries. There were, however, a few hundred Uzbek fans – including many who had made the journey from Central Asia – creating great atmospheres but also reminding the players of the high expectations they carried.

The team, for their part, were more than well-prepared. The entire coaching setup of FK Olympic was lifted and shifted to Qatar, where their numbers were so great that some coaches did not have spots in the dugout and instead watched games from the stands. The players’ quality was obviously important, but their togetherness also made a difference: Uzbekistan were by far the best and most tactically cohesive team at the tournament.

The top three teams at the U-23 Asian Cup were guaranteed a ticket to Paris, so reaching the semi-finals at the very least was a must. The White Wolves made the perfect start, winning all three of their group games against Malaysia, Kuwait and Vietnam, scoring 10 goals without conceding even one.

Then came their first big test: a quarter-final against Asian giants Saudi Arabia. The Green Falcons had some very talented players themselves, but they recognised their tactical and technical inferiority to Uzbekistan and looked to make the game a very physical duel-heavy affair. They might have hoped to disturb their opponents’ rhythm this way, but FK Olympic’s senior experience gave Uzbekistan an edge. They rode the challenges and drew the fouls before scoring towards the end of either half to win 2-0.

Another tough test followed in the semi-final against Indonesia’s staunch low block that possessed a devastating counterpunch in the form of Pratama Arhan’s rocket long throws, but the White Wolves emerged victorious yet again after dominating the game and outshooting their opponents 25-1. With that, they sealed their Olympics debut with a spotless record of five wins and no goals conceded.

Immediately after this success, the key players left the squad and returned to their foreign clubs as agreed. So, a slightly weakened Uzbek team faced Japan in the final, with both looking to become the first nation to lift multiple U-23 Asian Cup titles. The White Wolves put up a great fight, but a late goal and even later penalty save saw them go down 1-0 to the Young Samurai Blue.

That defeat was undoubtedly disappointing, but it was never going to overshadow the success of Olympic qualification. Reaching Paris was a monumental achievement. The White Wolves’ quality and cohesiveness proved them to be right up there with the best teams in Asia and some fancied them to spring a surprise with the world watching. The lights ultimately proved too bright - their Olympic campaign proper returned just a point from three games, and they crashed out early - but the job was done. Uzbekistan’s youth revolution was on the map.

This generation has been the country’s most successful to date. Their key players, such as Abdukodir Khusanov and Abbosbek Fayzullaev, played important roles in the squad that won Uzbekistan’s first major title on home soil – the 2023 U-20 Asian Cup. That tournament was also a showcase of Uzbekistan’s developed infrastructure and stadiums, but their players’ performances stole the spotlight. It was on the back of this campaign that Khusanov and Fayzullaev got their big moves to Lens and CSKA Moscow respectively.

They could easily have recorded Uzbekistan’s best-ever performance at a World Cup in Argentina later that year, but an agonising 97th-minute concession against Israel in the Round of 16 knocked them out. Still, that was hardly a failure - and their Olympic campaign should not be considered so either. They may have finished bottom of their group, but they put up tough fights against would-be gold medalists Spain and semi-finalists Egypt before drawing with the Dominican Republic. The results were faltering, but the White Wolves proved capable of going toe-to-toe with the very best - a fitting reward for decades of work.

6. DAWN (2025—)

Regardless of their Olympic elimination, the future is very bright for football in Uzbekistan.

For one, the Ministry of Justice recently reported the adoption of a presidential decree “On measures to expand the network of football educational institutions and develop football infrastructure in accordance with international standards”. They already have the best infrastructure in Central Asia, and show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Of course, infrastructure counts for very little unless it is well utilised, and Uzbekistan have a very good track record in that respect. The Uzbek Super League is continuing to grow in quality and competitiveness, as is highlighted by the fact that not one but two Uzbek clubs reached the AFC Champions League knockouts this season, and neither of them were defending champions Pakhtakor! More importantly, clubs are starting to enjoy success by trusting in youth.

A great example is the case of Surkhon. Founded in 1968, they have a storied history but with little success to show for it. They never climbed above the third tier of the Soviet leagues, and although they started in the top flight after independence, they instantly suffered relegation and mostly knocked around in the lower leagues thereafter as they contended with financial difficulties. They ended a long wait by returning to the Super League in 2019 and started with a very impressive sixth-placed finish, but then found themselves battling relegation every year thereafter.

After narrowly avoiding the drop in 2022, Surkhon decided to completely overhaul their approach. They parted ways with their Spanish head coach, let 18 of their senior team members leave at the end of their contracts, and replaced them with a host of free agent signings. A big part of their strategy involved recruiting young Uzbek talents from the lower tiers as well as a few from top-flight clubs’ academies, and so doing, they assembled the second-youngest squad in the league behind FK Olympic.

This squad – led by 36-tear-old Uzbek head coach Sergey Arslanov in his first job at a top-flight club – exceeded all expectations by matching their club-record sixth-place finish. This campaign is regarded by many as a catalyst in convincing the decision-makers in Uzbek football that investing in youth is not only an approach for long-term success but can also yield instant rewards.

This season, Surkhon still have the second-youngest average starting XI age behind Olympic, but a surprising name has snuck in-between in average squad age. The big pre-season talking point in Uzbek football was record champions Pakhtakor’s decision to double down on youth development. They let go of many of their big-name stars without replacement in the transfer window, instead opting to rely on youth academy graduates. Their average squad age currently is a very impressive 22.2.

Due to this shift in approach, though, Pakhtakor are not considered among the favourites for the title again. That is not a reflection of the quality of their youth academy, which has arguably been the best in the country in recent years, but simply a lessening of expectations as they undergo a transition. The ultimate hope for them will be to continue competing for titles while improving the sustainability of their financial situation through a youthful squad with relatively lower salaries as well as transfer fees earned.

The latter point has been the biggest and most blatant shortcoming of Uzbek football so far. Despite all their impressive youth development in recent years, the transfer record for a player leaving an Uzbek Super League club is just €2 million. Only six players have fetched a seven-digit transfer fee, of whom four went to the top three Middle Eastern leagues which are known to overpay for foreigners.

One of the issues, according to those involved behind the scenes in making such deals, still is a lack of appropriate showcasing of young talents. While some clubs like Surkhon and now Pakhtakor are starting to trust in youth, not everyone is following suit. For instance, Navbahor Namangan, who participated in the AFC Champions League knockouts earlier this season, have a very high average starting XI age of 29.3 this season.

This lack of opportunities has previously driven some of the country’s best young talents away from the Super League before they really broke through. Speaking to SCOUTED, Nikolai Egorychev, who has worked as a scout for clubs in the league, cited the example of Abdukodir Khusanov. He was already incredibly highly rated when he was developing in Bunyodkor’s youth academy, but a lack of a clear pathway to the senior team led to him leaving for Belarus at just 18 years old. There, he instantly became a regular starter for Energetik-BGU in the Premier League, impressing with consistent performances and undergoing significant physical development to transform into a powerful defender, even as a teenager. Thanks to his regular game time, Khusanov was signed by RC Lens in 2023, with whom he would become the first Uzbek footballer to feature in Ligue 1.

Hopefully, the impressive results of teams like Surkhon as well as ever-increasing international interest in Uzbek football thanks to the youth teams’ excellent performances will ensure that such stories do not become commonplace. André Kamara-Kiryukhin, formerly a sporting director at Turon, believes that these factors are starting to make a telling difference. Speaking to SCOUTED, he highlighted a great uptick in interest in Uzbek talents from Turkish clubs during a recent visit to the country.

Uzbekistan will need Turkish clubs to be prepared to invest more in their youngsters because that is the only established talent development pathway that remains open. Following their recent invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions, Russia is off the table for players looking to find a stepping stone to get to the world’s top leagues. Currently, two of the country’s brightest talents – Abbosbek Fayzullaev and Umarali Rakhmonaliev – are playing for CSKA Moscow and Rubin Kazan respectively, so their futures are a little clouded.

Ideally, Uzbekistan will want to establish direct pathways to the top European leagues or at least top developmental leagues. A very encouraging recent development was the loan deal of 2005-born attacking talent Mukhammadali Urinboev from Pakhtakor to English Premier League club Brentford. He has only featured for their B team and does not look likely to make it into the senior squad, but regardless, the very fact that teams from the world’s best leagues are actively scouting in Uzbekistan underscores their emergence as a hub of developing local youth talent.

While this story has solely focused on men’s football so far, it is worth noting that Uzbekistan also have an eye on promoting youth development in women’s football. They have a good historic record of professionalisation, especially relative to other countries in the region, and as most top clubs are women’s divisions of the most successful men’s teams, financial constraints are not as big an issue as in other places.

Their most significant success in the women’s game has to be the victory of Sogdiana in the West Zone of the 2022 AFC Women’s Club Championship. But the women’s teams are yet to reach the level of success of the men. With continued investment (such as by becoming the first Central Asian nation to host the Women’s Asian Cup, when they will do so in 2029) and initiatives to encourage young girls to play football as well as improvement of global scouting in the women’s football, there is reason for optimism in this respect to.

On the men’s side, the White Wolves are on the cusp of absolutely cementing their rise. As the FIFA World Cup expands to a 48-team format in 2026, they are among the favourites to qualify from Asia and make their debut at football’s biggest stage.

Uzbekistan’s youth revolution seems to knock over milestones with a measured inevitably. If they secure the holy grail of World Cup qualification, there’ll be no doubt left: the story of the White Wolves is the story of one of the fastest-developing nations in football history.

With thanks to Donat Iskanderoff.