THE OTHER NATIONAL TEAM · UZBEKISTAN
During the men’s World Cup, FemGol will trace the history of some of the women’s national teams from the countries taking to the pitch. Because a country’s football doesn’t fit in a single team.
Uzbek football is experiencing something for the first time: what it feels like to have a team at a men’s World Cup. The men’s side face Portugal today, with attention fixed on a generation that has taken the country somewhere it has never been before. It is a story being written in the present tense.
The women’s team knows what it means to wait to return to a major tournament. They did it for twenty-three years.
But first, you have to tell the story of how it all began.
On 23 September 1995, Uzbekistan won their first international match: 1–0 against India. Four days later, in the same tournament — the Asian Cup — they lost 0–17 to Japan. That was how the project started. The learning curve was brutal, and Asian women’s football was a vast world. But the team did not disappear.
Between 1995 and 2003, Uzbekistan played five consecutive editions of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup. Then they stopped qualifying for more than two decades.
In Central Asia, however, they became the benchmark. They won the 2018 CAFA Women’s Championship with 43 goals scored and one conceded across four matches — including a 20–0 win over Afghanistan. They retained it in 2022 with twenty goals scored and none conceded.
Two titles, eight wins, 63 goals for and one against. Queens of their region, though Iran pushed them all the way: Uzbekistan won that clash 2–1 in 2018 and 1–0 in 2022.
Dominant in Central Asia. And yet absent from the main continental stage.
Seventeen goals and a shootout
Qualifying for the 2026 Asian Cup was held in Tashkent. Uzbekistan opened with a 10–0 win over Sri Lanka and followed it with a 7–0 victory against Laos. Nepal did exactly what was needed to head into the final game with a fighting chance: they also won their first two matches and forced a direct head-to-head to decide the spot.
Uzbekistan led 3–1. Nepal equalised at 3–3 through a Sabitra Bhandari hat-trick. The two sides finished level on points and goal difference, so the spot was decided in a penalty shoot-out.
Uzbekistan won 4–2.
They hadn’t knocked out a continental powerhouse or won a title. They had achieved something they had been waiting for since 2003: to go back.
The return
Group B at the 2026 Asian Cup in Australia brought together North Korea, China, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan. The Uzbeks fell 0–3 to both of the group’s powerhouses. After two matchdays they had yet to score and needed a big win.
They beat Bangladesh 4–0: Diyorakhon Khabibullaeva opened the scoring, Dildora Nozimova doubled the advantage with a brace, and Nilufar Kudratova sealed it late. Enough to advance as one of the two best third-placed sides.
For the first time in their history, Uzbekistan reached the quarter-finals of the Asian Cup. For a few days, they were just one win away from qualifying directly for Brazil 2027.
The gap to the continental elite became apparent in the next round: South Korea won 6–0. Then, in the Asian play-off for another direct World Cup place, the Philippines beat them 2–0 with two second-half goals.
Two doors closed in less than a week.
One still open
Uzbekistan will compete in the first phase of the FIFA Play-Off Tournament between November and December 2026. Should they advance, they will face the final phase in February 2027.
They have never played at a women’s World Cup. After more than two decades without even reaching the Asian Cup, they still have a route to Brazil 2027.
The gap to Asia’s best sides remains large — the results against North Korea, China, and South Korea make that clear. But before 2025, Uzbekistan didn’t even have the chance to measure that gap on the continental stage.
The official squad list of 26 players, closed by the AFC on 25 February 2026, reflects the team’s structure. Twenty-five were registered with Uzbek clubs. Fourteen were players of FC Nasaf. The only player registered abroad was Dilrabo Asadova, at Russian side Zvezda.
Diyorakhon Khabibullaeva was also listed at Nasaf after Trabzonspor announced the end of her stint at the Turkish club in July 2025. The international exception was minimal: the core of the squad was still competing inside the country.
This is not yet a team made up of stars scattered across the top European leagues. It is a squad trying to close the gap from within, with players born in 2007 — Aminjonova, Usarova, Bakhtiyarova — who will be around twenty-two when 2029 comes around.
That year, Uzbekistan will host the AFC Women’s Asian Cup. It will be the first edition held in Central Asia. The country that spent decades watching from the outside will become the host, and many of the players who today represent a bet on the future will be able to do so as established footballers.
The men have finally reached the stage they had been chasing for decades.
The women came back after twenty-three years, reached the quarter-finals of the Asian Cup for the first time, and still have a chance to make it to Brazil 2027.
They are not at the World Cup.
But for the first time, the World Cup is no longer outside the story they can tell.
