The rise of Uzbekistan football: the White Wolves’ Golden Generation

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The rise of Uzbekistan football: the White Wolves’ Golden Generation  Following impressive results at the youth level, including a maiden appearance at last year's Paris Olympic Games, Uzbekistan is enjoying success on a global scale.  In partnership with Media City  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/07/17/the-rise-of-uzbekistan-football-the-white-wolves-golden-generation  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00The 2026 FIFA World Cup is rapidly approaching and the countries making up the 48 teams taking

00:06part are starting to emerge. Among them is Uzbekistan who have qualified for the very

00:12first time in the tournament's history. So what is behind their rapid rise to FIFA World Cup

00:18qualification and who are the breakout stars of Uzbekistan's golden generation?

00:23Hello and welcome to Football Now here from the Albaic Stadium in Qatar. Just over a year ago in this

00:36very arena, Uzbekistan pushed the host nation Qatar all the way to penalties in the quarterfinal of the

00:432023 Asian Cup. Now the Central Asian nation is celebrating qualifying for a FIFA World Cup for

00:50the very first time. Yeah it's huge for them and in terms of how important that is, we saw that when

00:58they qualified for the Olympics for the first time last year. To qualify for the Olympics was like

01:03winning the World Cup in their mind. It's a massive stage. It feels all kind of too good to be true in

01:07terms of how they planned this kind of ascension as such. A time when a couple of good players like

01:13Kuzinov, Shomuridov are getting into the top leagues at the same time as this blossoming young talent is

01:19coming through. This always felt like the stars were aligning in terms of the quality of players

01:23that were coming through plus the expanded World Cup. If Uzbekistan weren't going to qualify at this

01:28time, they were never going to qualify. So the fact that they have qualified in this instance, I think

01:33has been testament to it. As a country, I think the wider population, especially in the western sphere,

01:39probably couldn't even tell you one thing about Uzbekistan. In four years time, everybody will say,

01:44the first thing they'll say is that they're a good football team or at least a team that can get to the World Cup.

01:48And I think that's where the pride of the nation will start to come through.

01:52Uzbekistan guaranteed their place at the FIFA 2026 World Cup as one of the two best teams in the AFC

01:59World Cup qualification Group A, ahead of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Since becoming an

02:06independent nation in 1992, Uzbekistan have been among the strongest teams in Asia. And in the last three

02:13years, their FIFA ranking has surged from 85th to 58th in the world, their highest position since 2016.

02:22Uzbekistan have reached at least the quarter final stage at five of the last six Asian Cups,

02:28with the highlight being a semi-final appearance back in 2011, again here in Qatar. We spoke to former

02:36Australia international striker Tim Cahill who was on the pitch that day and he told us just what makes

02:42them such a difficult side to come up against. Compact, very well organised and they can hurt you.

02:48So if they score, it'd be very difficult to get back into the game. But they're all strong, they're

02:53physical and very disciplined and they fight to the end. We've seen that in the Asian Cup when we played

02:58them in Qatar, how difficult it was. Well, the success of Uzbekistan's senior team should come as no

03:03surprise given the recent performances of their youth levels. In 2023, they won the under-20s Asian

03:11Cup and then just last year followed that up with a runners-up finish to Japan in the under-23s Asian

03:17Cup here in Qatar. That performance earned them a qualification spot at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

03:24So, however, Uzbekistan managed to develop such an impressive youth programme.

03:29It's kind of a mixture of a few things. There's kind of been a drive by the Football Association to

03:34heavily invest in youth football in terms of having club sides be required to have

03:40academies and that be something that they're mandated to do as part of being a professional club

03:46in the country. So that drives them in terms of recruiting, training. The standard of training

03:51facilities has increased. So players are playing on better pitches than they were. Players are getting

03:56opportunities. I think they were very smart with kind of things like the youth national teams. When

04:04it came to like the Olympic team, they literally set up a football club, played with each other,

04:08trained with each other, were managed by the same manager who manages the U23s and I think that's

04:14allowed them to then kind of drive on further and have more success. Uzbekistan's golden generation is no

04:20longer just catching attention in Asia. Abdoukader Kuzunov became the first ever Uzbek player to

04:27feature in the Premier League after Pep Guardiola's Manchester City signed the 20-year-old centre-back

04:33from French club FC Lens back in the January transfer window. So could this begin the flow of

04:39players from a previously untapped market into Europe's top five leagues? Yeah, as you can imagine,

04:46it's massive, like anywhere in the world. The Premier League is the big league. The obsession for

04:53English Premier League and the European football is massive. So when you get players like Shamarudov,

04:58who went over to Italy in the last couple of years, and now Kuzunov going over to Manchester City,

05:03it's big news. If he hadn't been an 18-year-old kid who backed himself and went to Belarus at an early

05:11age to go and get first-team football, he probably wouldn't have been discovered by the mainstream

05:15world until he was a lot older. There's a number of good talents out there, but it's getting them

05:19out of Uzbek, which is the difficulty. And hopefully as we move forward and get more kind of coverage

05:26either at a senior World Cup or a youth World Cup, you get to see these players more often.

05:30And even while we're talking around qualifying for the 2026 World Cup, I think everybody's idea was

05:36when this was starting up that 2030 onwards is going to be where the golden generation is probably

05:40going to be developed. It's certainly an exciting time for Uzbek football and we look forward to

05:46seeing them for the first time ever at next year's FIFA World Cup. Let us know if you'll be cheering

05:52on the White Wolves using the hashtag footballnowuzbekistan. That's all we've got time for though

05:57this week. We'll see you next time. Bye for now.

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