Uzbek GOAT Mirjalol Qosimov turns 56

Uzbek GOAT Mirjalol Qosimov turns 56

Mirjalol Qosimov, who is widely considered the greatest footballer in the nation’s history, marked his 56th birthday on Wednesday. Now the head coach of Almalyk-based club OKMK, Qosimov remains one of the most decorated and highly respected figures in the sport’s history.

Born Mirjalol Kushakovich Qosimov on September 17, 1970, in Tashkent, he started his football training at the age of 10 at a football school in the Chigatoy district under coach Yuriy Gospodarchuk, who initially did not want to accept him before giving in to pressure from Qosimov and his father. He progressed through the Pakhtakor Tashkent youth setup before making his senior debut.

A 174 cm central midfielder, Qosimov built his reputation as a deep-lying playmaker, serving the national team as a creative midfield presence rather than a traditional ball-winner. His style relied on vision and technique instead of physical strength — spotting the game from deep, finding teammates with disguised passes, and controlling the pace from central midfield, with free kicks, corners and long-range passing becoming trademarks of his era. That ability also produced an unusually strong scoring record for a player in his role: he ended his career with 210 goals, which earned him places in both the Club 200 of Berador Abduraimov and the Gennadi Krasnitsky club, two honors reserved for the country’s most prolific scorers. He also made history in Europe, becoming the first Uzbek player, and only the second Asian after South Korea’s Cha Bum-kun, to score in a UEFA club competition.

His first major honors came with the Soviet Union: he was in the squad that won the 1987 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Canada and the 1988 UEFA European Under-19 Championship in Czechoslovakia, and he also represented the Soviet Union at under-21 level. He later played for Uzbekistan from 1992 to 2005, collecting 67 caps and scoring 31 goals for the national side, and helped the team win gold at the 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima — still the country’s only major international trophy — as well as reach the final of the 1995 Afro-Asian Cup of Nations. He was named Uzbekistan’s Footballer of the Year in 1993 and 1998, and was runner-up in 1994.

Across his club career, Qosimov played for Pakhtakor, Dynamo Minsk, Spartak Vladikavkaz, Alania, Krylia Sovetov, Al Shabab and Mash'al. He played a key part in helping Mash'al finish second in the 2005 Uzbek league championship, the club’s best result ever, before retiring that year. His farewell game, played on June 2, 2007, at Tashkent’s MHSK Stadium, ended in a 3-3 draw between the national team and a combined European and Asian all-star side that included Ali Daei, Sergei Semak and Andrei Karyaka, among others.

Qosimov entered coaching shortly after retiring, first as an assistant at Mash'al and then with the national and Olympic teams under Rauf Inileev. He was appointed head coach of Quruvchi — now Bunyodkor — in 2007, and in his first season guided the club to the semifinals of the AFC Champions League.

He first led the national team in September 2008 but was replaced in April 2010 after a difficult period. He returned in September 2012, at times handling both Bunyodkor and the national team at the same time, and took the side to a program-record 14 points in one World Cup qualifying round, though it finished two goals short of qualifying for the 2014 tournament. He resigned after that campaign, but the Uzbekistan Football Federation did not accept the resignation at the time. He finally stepped down in June 2015 after a defeat to North Korea in 2018 World Cup qualifying.

Qosimov came back to Bunyodkor in 2017 after a two-year break, reviving the club’s fortunes after a decline during his absence, when it went trophyless and repeatedly failed to get past the AFC Champions League group stage. He left Bunyodkor again in 2018 and has been in charge of OKMK since 2019.