Alisher Aminov. Photo from his personal archive
In recent years, Uzbek sports have undergone seismic changes. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has been making a concerted effort to immerse himself in the sports sector and recently took the helm of Uzbekistan’s Olympic Committee.
Fergana continues its conversation (the first part can be found here) with analyst and international expert in economics and law, FIFA expert, and candidate for the presidency of the Russian Football Union, Alisher Aminov. He has developed a sports development program for the country and proposes concrete solutions to pressing issues in the field.
— What is the role of the National Olympic Committee in the sports management system and its development? Why did the president of Uzbekistan decide to take charge of the Olympic Committee, given his already heavy workload?
— If we analyze how National Olympic Committees function in leading sports nations—where the NOC is not the main governing body of sports—it becomes clear that the role of Olympic officials in these countries is quite limited. Their responsibilities are often reduced to organizing the participation of athletes in the Olympic Games, which take place once every two years.
While working in Switzerland, I had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), interact with the leadership of ANOC and WADA, and observe how the Olympic Committees of Northern European countries operate. I was struck by how small their staff sizes were. In Denmark, for example, all sports federations, the Ministry of Sports, and the NOC are housed in a single building, and the entire NOC operates out of just three rooms. Sometimes, they even hire travel agencies to arrange their athletes' participation in the Olympic Games, believing that such logistics are not within the committee’s purview. This approach is seen as more cost-effective and prevents unnecessary staff expansion.
With Mirziyoyev’s arrival, Uzbekistan’s NOC has become the governing body overseeing all sports federations in the country. The effectiveness of this management model raises questions and has sparked a broader discussion about the NOC’s role within Uzbekistan’s sports administration system.
— What’s the issue?
— Conducting inspections and assessing the state of various sports, as well as preparing reserves and specialists, is undoubtedly useful and necessary. However, the primary responsibility for this lies with the individual sports federations. Hopefully, effective cooperation between the NOC, all federations, and the Ministry of Sports will yield tangible results in the near future.
The sports industry is one of the most complex, difficult, specific, and multifaceted sectors with its own jurisdiction. For example, time has shown that managing the football industry is much more complicated than any other sector of the economy; many successful businessmen have failed in managing not only federations but also football clubs.
— What are the options?
— The authorities and society must seek and find civilized, effective forms of interaction with the industry, so as to work not only «on the ground,» solving current problems, but also looking to the future, ensuring conditions for preparing reserves and specialists, guaranteeing a high level of professional competitions based on a clear economic model, and creating quality media content.
If we analyze the medal structure, as the president recently mentioned, we will understand that international awards for Uzbek sports are currently brought by only a few individual sports, mostly combat sports. Managing federations in individual sports is many times easier than in team sports, and football, in terms of complexity, is the number one sport. Over all the years of participation in the Olympic Games, the Uzbekistan national teams have not even come close to competing for medals in team sports, which define the sporting identity of the state.
— At the last Olympic Games, the Uzbekistan national football team played for the first time.
— The tournament was a failure for the team. The results and the work of the coaching staff were not discussed among the leadership of the UFA during the executive committee. The head coach of the Olympic team, Timur Kapadze, made vague statements about the performance. The absence of a qualified analysis and the lack of feedback from the sports community prevent even the president of Uzbekistan from objectively assessing the reasons for the failures.
The cause-and-effect relationship is easy to trace: there is no competent control over the activities of the relevant agencies, the coordination system lacks an important link, namely, the position of a qualified state advisor to the president of Uzbekistan on physical education and sports, who would oversee this area exclusively, as is the case in many other countries. As practice shows, the advisor's status, if it matches the position according to professional criteria, is one of the key roles in the management structure.
— What kind of problems exist in the regulatory framework related to the sports management system, and what legislative initiatives would you propose to address them?
First of all, it must be understood that sports in Uzbekistan operate based on the norms and laws of the state, as well as the regulations of international and national federations. The country has adopted the law «On Physical Culture and Sports,» which should regulate the legal relationships between the main entities in sports. Currently, there are gaps in the regulation of professional sports in this law, and its specifics are not sufficiently taken into account. The legislation does not provide direct and fully comprehensive answers regarding the distinction between professional and amateur sports, the statuses of professional athletes, coaches, and referees.
These shortcomings are largely due to the lack of a clear understanding and reflection in the laws of the implemented and expected model of sports regulation. To achieve a balance between the entities in sports, it is necessary to grant public federations and sports leagues the authority to establish norms governing social and labor relations, but only after these norms have been agreed upon with professional unions in the respective sports.
— So, you're referring to the Labor Code?
— Exactly. The Labor Code will serve as the foundation for regulating labor relations between athletes and coaches. It is intended to address the conflicts between labor and civil law that arise when concluding employment and civil law contracts between athletes, coaches, and sports organizations.
The specialists I consulted in sports law, after analyzing the regulatory framework, concluded that the primary financial burden falls on employers. Government support and financial guarantees for professional sports, including special social security for athletes and coaches, are not provided in the legislation. This highlights the need to improve public relations in the field of professional sports.
— For example?
— It is necessary to define the concept of a professional athlete and professional coach, distinguish between the industry affiliation of labor and civil legislation, while allowing a mixed organization of labor. There should be limits to state regulation of public relations and minimum labor standards, as well as the establishment of a new type of contractual legal responsibility and a system for pre-trial and arbitration dispute resolution applicable to professional sports subjects.
Currently, the provisions and regulations on sports competitions, which regulate labor relations, are not always applied by all subjects of physical culture and sports. Moreover, courts do not always use these documents as sources of law when resolving labor disputes. To address this issue, it is proposed to amend the Labor Code to directly apply the norms approved by public sports federations or professional sports leagues to professional athletes and coaches participating in competitions organized by these federations or leagues.
As part of the expert work, it is also proposed to define clear categories for athletes and coaches in the Labor Code, including professional athletes, coaches in professional sports, as well as athletes and coaches engaged in sports training. This will help eliminate the duplication of norms with educational staff, resolve the uncertainty of the legal status of these categories of workers, and improve social guarantees for coaches involved in sports training.
In addition, it is proposed to establish the specifics of the material liability of professional athletes and coaches. They should compensate for any damage caused to the employer in full, for example, if their wrongful actions lead to fines imposed on the club. This is necessary because, at present, professional athletes and coaches cannot be held fully liable, while sports federations often impose financial sanctions.
Currently, disputes between athletes, coaches, and employers are resolved through arbitration, which involves the consideration of property relations in specialized arbitration courts. In the draft program for the development of football in Uzbekistan, I proposed to standardize the status of the jurisdictional bodies of sports federations and leagues for resolving sports disputes and legally establish the status of sports arbitration courts.
It is proposed to introduce a mandatory pre-trial procedure for resolving sports disputes in labor legislation. This approach will help avoid the duplication of functions between state courts and non-judicial bodies for resolving sports disputes, ensuring timely protection of the rights of the parties in the dispute by entities with specialized knowledge in the field of physical culture and sports.
The result of these changes will be a more sustainable development of physical culture and sports, an improvement in the regulatory legal framework for labor, as well as a balanced consideration of the interests of the main stakeholders in professional sports. However, the analysis of the legal regulation of the social protection system for professional athletes shows that their social security is still low. Defining the status of a professional athlete as an employee will entail the application of the entire body of labor legislation to them.
— Can you assess the effectiveness of the decrees of the President of Uzbekistan on the development of sports and football in recent years, as well as the decisions on sports issues discussed and made at high-level meetings?
— Over more than 30 years since independence, many decrees have been issued by the country's leadership and government regarding the development of sports and football. However, as time has shown, the quality of these documents often left much to be desired, and their implementation did not always lead to the set goals and objectives. For example, three years ago, a presidential decree was issued that provided for the sale of football club shares by the state until 2030, as well as a decree to assign sponsors to clubs. The question arises: what sponsor can the state «appoint» in the absence of an economic model, except for state-owned enterprises? Did the Presidential Administration conduct an analysis of the real state of professional football in the country before issuing such decrees? Have the necessary conditions been created for this?
Private business can only be involved on a forced basis for now. None of the Uzbek football clubs can be considered a promising financial asset, as they do not even recover five percent of their expenses. Clubs receive nothing from the sale of television rights, and attendance is also far from promising. The production and sale of players to top European leagues is completely absent. Moreover, there is a reverse, regressive process taking place: clubs are starting to close down. For example, the Bekabad Metallurgical Plant, which had consistently financed its «Metallurg» team for decades, has refused to support the club. The club ceased to exist because the plant’s management understands that tens of millions of dollars are being poured down the drain every year. There are no fans in the stadium, and there is no preparation of competitive football players for Uzbekistan’s national teams.
— What is to be done?
— First, we need to understand who has been managing the league in recent years, conduct a thorough analysis of professional competitions based on all its indicators, and most importantly — stop lying to ourselves and learn to tell the truth. A person or a government is characterized not by a mistake, but by their reaction to the mistake. One of the main tasks of the new president of the UFA is to conduct an independent audit of all the UFA and PFL regulations together with the Ministry of Sports.
— Dier Imamkhodzhaev has been leading the League for quite some time. What specifically bothers you about the work of the PFL?
— Let’s conduct an objective analysis of the PFL leadership’s activities and what its president has done to strengthen the league. None of the club leaders, on whose money the PFL functions, can say anything; they are cowardly and spineless because they understand that Imamkhodzhaev was supported by UFA president Azizov.
There are no reforms in the league, on the contrary — a dynamic process of degradation is underway. The ideal league for the president of the PFL today is the burial of «Metallurg,» «Zeravshan,» «Chirchik,» the refusal of «Olympic» to play in the Super League, the reduction of the Pro League from 8 to 6 teams with participation from university students and young members of academies, as well as the lack of qualified management in clubs due to the absence of a football management training program at the UFA.
The PFL leadership, with the complete inaction of the UFA leadership, is simply killing professional football. And instead of clubs rejecting state funding by 2030, as stated in the president’s decree, we will end up with simply the absence of these clubs. Since neither the UFA, nor the PFL, nor the Ministry of Sports are lifting a finger to create conditions for the emergence of private investors.
There is only one active fan in the whole country, the former mayor of Tashkent, Jahongir Artikhodjaev, who decided to invest in «Pakhtakor.» He stated that he was ready to build a new stadium, fully reconstruct the base in Kibra, and invest over $100 million in the infrastructure and maintenance of the club in the coming years. Three years have passed since the president of Uzbekistan issued the decree, but even Artikhodjaev has still not been given the club’s shares.
— Why?
— The reasons are not entirely clear. The motives of the state structures are a mystery. Uzbek professional football is still not a profitable enough industry to announce tenders for the purchase of clubs. The government bodies have not yet conducted the procedure for transferring the club’s shares to Artikhodjaev’s structures over the past three years, even though he is officially the president of the club. The stadium is closed and in an emergency condition. Artikhodjaev is financing the club and treating it as a loan. What the former mayor of Tashkent is hoping for in the future is not entirely clear. Maybe, in the end, he will obtain the shares in exchange for unpaid debts?
But from the examples of «Pakhtakor» and «Metallurg,» one can conclude that those who prepare decrees for the president of the country bear no responsibility, creating an image of the president as a populist and undermining his authority.
— What amount of money are we talking about? How much is Uzbek football worth?
— The Professional Football League, meaning all the clubs combined, spends about $150 million annually. However, funds from state companies and the regional budget do not remain in football, as a large portion of the money goes toward salaries and transfers. I am sure that Artikhodjaev, even before acquiring the shares, will later refuse to maintain «Pakhtakor,» as he is already realizing the huge financial losses and inefficiencies of the system he would have to invest in. There is a risk that he will abandon the club, just as his predecessor Alisher Usmanov did, and the club will eventually return to the balance sheet of the Tashkent hokimiyat (city administration). The disappearance of «Pakhtakor» is unacceptable.
— How is the football management system in Uzbekistan? How effective is the governing body?
— The management system and personnel policy are the most painful topics in Uzbek sports and football. In the modern world, there is a concept called imitation. It permeates all areas of our lives. The imitation of active work has also reached the leadership of the UFA (Uzbekistan Football Association). If you look at the Association's social media channels, the average person gets the impression that the leadership is actively working in all areas: beautiful diagrams of talent development are drawn, training camps are held, competitions take place, and educational courses and seminars are active. But none of the specialists are able to conduct an independent, qualified analysis of the effectiveness of this activity.
— Could you provide specific examples?
— A group of specialists under my leadership developed a comprehensive program for the development of Uzbekistan's football industry, a 170-page document, but no clear response has been received from Ravshan Irmatov regarding it. I suggested holding a meeting to discuss and refine the program in a broader format, under the leadership of then-President of the UFA, Azizov, with the involvement of the executive committee, but again, there was silence. I approached Azizov’s advisor, Rakhmitdin Zikriyev, with the suggestion to familiarize the President of the UFA with the development program and organize a meeting with him, but he responded that the President of the Uzbekistan Football Association, Azizov, is very busy and does not read more than two pages on football.
He has compromising files on everyone, but he won’t imprison anyone. This raises a logical question—why does the UFA need such a president, if he is not working in the federation, doesn’t imprison anyone despite the facts of corruption, doesn’t read more than two pages, and has such a useless advisor in the leadership of the UFA?
— Still, you haven’t answered the question of how the governing body of the UFA, the executive committee, functions. Who is part of it and whom do they represent? What committees function, their composition and activities I couldn’t find on the UFA website. Should we expect changes with the arrival of Kurbanov?
— When I started looking into what hidden currents exist within the UFA, I found that there was, you could say, a «cold war» between Azizov and Irmatov within the leadership of the Association. There was no unity there. Each of them had their own people, and their views didn’t always align. So, there was an internal contradiction, and at some point, Azizov even relied on the crafty Imamkhodjaev and consulted with him on certain matters. Well, when the president of the UFA is incompetent, it’s easy to manipulate him. Those who have access to the person in power hold the truth. How accurate this «truth» is often didn’t matter. I believe that any professional with a sense of self-respect and who defends their position will never adjust to the leadership.
— What else did you notice?
— Trying to understand whether the UFA apparatus and executive committee would be able to effectively implement the program I proposed, I discovered that the executive committee of the UFA, as the governing body responsible for making key decisions, did not hold a single meeting last year. The committee includes people who have no relation to football, while the actual stakeholders in football are not represented, even though the Federation has been renamed to an Association. To this day, the body has no coaches, referees, or representatives of women's football.
In reality, football stakeholders exist only on paper, but they have no real influence on key decisions.
The only functioning committees are the jurisdictional bodies, but their performance leaves much to be desired. The UFA does not even have a development committee, and all decision-making is concentrated in the hands of one person — the first vice-president of the Association, Ravshan Irmatov. That’s why the UFA leadership didn’t provide me with expert assessments and didn’t present alternative development options.
— What exactly do you mean?
— I asked Irmatov to have the staff fill out the empty tables with a detailed analysis of professional competitions across all indicators, the state of youth and junior football, and the education of club managers, but I received nothing in return. Development issues were handed over to Irmatov himself and Guy Kiara — a technical director of questionable qualification, brought in from Belgium through the patronage of FIFA officials. My communication with him led me to conclude that Guy Kiara talks a lot about the philosophy of football but is unable to make any significant changes for the better, even in terms of training specialists in the field of football.
The powers of the FAU Secretary General, Avaz Maksumov, are extremely limited; he doesn't even have signing authority, even though he is the second-highest official in the Association's leadership. It turns out that Ravshan Irmatov is just as much an autocrat, making all the decisions unilaterally because the executive committee and committees don't work. It was beneficial for him to make decisions on his own, coordinating key matters with Azizov.
As for development issues, I discovered that the FAU has no approved strategy or program for the development of football in Uzbekistan for the coming years. A network of regional academies has been created in all areas, but as soon as I began to look into this matter, it became clear that the modernization of the existing schools is not being carried out according to strictly established technical requirements. The academies are not equipped with the necessary equipment. How selection is carried out in the regions, what level regional competitions are held at, who will have rights to the graduates of the academies when they become professional players, where significant state and FAU funds are being invested — these are all unanswered questions.
— You’re talking about your program. Does the work of the academies somehow feature in it?
The program for the development of sports in Uzbekistan can be viewed via the link.
— Not academies, but regional centers for training not only talents but also specialists in the field of football. The program details what the center should consist of, what its function is, how it should be managed, and what the effectiveness criteria should be for the activities of these centers. I didn’t come up with these requirements myself; I formulated them with specialists based on the experience of studying developed football countries in Europe. The word “academy” significantly limits the functions of the center. It is necessary to create a three-level system of centers at the national, regional, and local levels with a unified developed methodology for training reserves and specialists in football.
And while the construction of the national center with FIFA and FAU funding is progressing rapidly in Dustlik, there are no regional centers yet. These academies were overseen by Irmatov, but later the supervisory role was transferred by Azizov to another vice-president, Odil Akhmedov. I had a one-hour conversation with him on how he plans to develop the academies, but did not receive a single answer to any of my questions. Clearly, Odil is not ready for this role as a vice-president. He started his work in the academies by replacing Irmatov’s leaders with his own people, and he also created his own academy on the territory of the former RSShI. With his financial capabilities, Odil didn’t even bother to visit any European universities in the field of football management and law, nor did he receive the proper education. However, he believes he was appointed vice-president deservedly because he played football. But a good driver does not equal a good manager.
To be continued.
