UPDATE: The Islamic Republic of Iran defeated Uzbekistan 1-0 in the finals on Tuesday evening.
I had a fantastic time with my son Oliver last night at the CAFA Nations Cup 2023 soccer game between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Oliver developed a passion for soccer through playing on his school’s team. Like any good dad, I want to support his interests and selfishly, spend time with him, so I got us tickets on iticket.uz. We bought the most expensive seats in the stadium ($18) and were situated at midfield about 5 rows up. Three of Oliver’s friends from his soccer team joined us.
The Central Asian Football Association consists of six teams as you can see in the table below. I put the nation’s population to get a sense of the strength of the football association. Iran is a large country that regularly qualifies for the World Cup and what Uzbekistan is striving to become. I was surprised to learn Kazakhstan (19 million) after independence chose to join UEFA instead of CAFA. I think they would be better suited to compete in the CAFA region.
| Afghanistan | 41.6 million population |
| Islamic Republic of Iran | 87 million |
| Kyrgyzstan | 6.8 million |
| Tajikistan | 10.2 million |
| Turkmenistan | 6.7 million |
| Uzbekistan | 35 million |
This is the inaugural CAFA Nations Cup which will be a biennial competition. Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are the joint hosts. Uzbekistan hosts a lot of Asian competitions because it has stadium capacity, a growing economy, and a stable political climate. They invited Russia, Thailand, and Oman to participate with only Oman accepting. The seven teams are battling it out this month. With Uzbekistan’s convincing 5-1 thrashing of Tajikistan, they won Pool B and will play Iran on Tuesday night at Milliy Stadium.
Soccer games are awesome when there are goals and deadly boring for me when there are no goals. The teams didn’t disappoint last night. Tajikistan played defensively the entire game as they were outmatched talent-wise by the Uzbeks. They had a counter-attack that resulted in a foul and a free kick that resulted in a goal right before halftime. The Uzbeks turned it around in the second half scoring three goals from regular play and two penalty kicks. Their top player, Eldor Shomurodov, who currently plays for Serie B Italian club Spezio, scored a penalty kick and had a beautiful back pass assist for another goal.
Another star for Uzbekistan was not suited up for the game and sat directly behind us. Jaloliddin Masharipov plays with Christian Renaldo for the Saudi club Al Nassr. Kids were coming up to him the entire game to take selfies and shake his hand. The security guys escorted them over to meet the Uzbek soccer hero which was nice. He was patient and kind during the many interruptions to his game-viewing experience.
NYU professor and public intellectual Scot Galloway was saying the other day on his podcast that fathers sometimes need to get into what their children love instead of what they love. Soccer is a good one because I do like it and am happy Oliver loves the game. We are connecting more because I now follow the sport closely. It was so fun to spend the evening with him last night!
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