When the draw for the AFC Champions League Two Round of 16 was conducted at the end of 2025, there was one fixture that immediately stood out above all others
Being Asia’s second-tier club competition, featuring teams from Asia’s top and middle-tier nations, there is a fascination with knowing where Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al Nassr will play next.
While that has been tempered somewhat by the 41-year-old’s absence from any away trips, in the group stage there were far flung trips to Iraq, Tajikistan and India for the Saudi Pro League giants.
There was a natural level of disappointment in each of those three nations when it was revealed Ronaldo would remain in Riyadh, but it didn’t stop the fans flocking to see Al Nassr’s other headline names such as Sadio Mane and Joao Felix.
In all three away games featuring Al Nassr the home side recorded their biggest attendance of the group stage, with FC Goa attracting 14,389 to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium; almost three times their average crowd otherwise.
And now it’s Turkmenistan’s turn to host the Ronaldo(-less) Road Show after Al Nassr were drawn to play little-known FK Arkadag, who despite winning last year’s inaugural AFC Challenge League, remain almost a complete mystery outside their own country; which itself is one of Asia’s most isolated and reclusive.
So while Ronaldo may not travel to Ashgabat, especially in light of his current dramas in Saudi Arabia, it still remains one of the most extreme mismatches in world football; a squad of lavishly paid former European stars against one of the most secretive and mysterious teams in world football.
So who are FK Arkadag, the team hoping to cause one of the greatest upsets in club football?
Peter Leonard is the former Central Asia editor at Eurasianet, and a renowned expert on Central Asian affairs. Back in December 2023 joined us on The Asian Game Podcast to discuss this mysterious new club making waves in Turkmenistan.
What are the origins of FK Arkadag?
The story of Arkadag begins with the former President. So, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow became President 2006 and he succeeded the previous eccentric President. And initially (he) sort of was a dull-as-dishwater character, but he started to acquire himself a bit of a cult of personality, much of which was concentrated on his image as a man of action, a man of sport.
He loves doing sport whenever he gets the opportunity, whether it’s riding horses or indeed, on occasion, he’s been doing target practice with pistols, riding bikes, that particular big passion of his.
He actually stepped down as President last year, but before he had a chance to do that, one of his parting shots was to announce he was going to create this new city out of nothing. It’s about 50 kilometres from the current capital [Ashgabat]. He sort of willed this Ozymandian vision for reasons that are not altogether clear.
And of course, as befits any city, the city had to, of course, have all the trappings, which included a football club, and that football club is Arkadag. And I should add an important note here the name of the city, Arkadag, happens to also be the official nickname for former President Berdimuhamedow.
So the situation is that Arkadag, the former President, has created a city named Arkadag, and he’s got a football club called Arkadag, which has a local TV station called Arkadag, and a newspaper which is also called Arkadag. So maybe that’s kind of giving you the picture.
What is the ambition? Are there dreams of conquering Asia and qualifying for the Club World Cup?
I think you’re attributing a little too much long-term vision to the project. I think what happens with these dictators is they surround themselves with lick spittles who desperately want to impress the boss and, and I think primarily the function of this football team is just to have something with the name of the President, you know, kicking everyone’s butt and just being really good.
So what is the very first thing that they did when the team was formed? This is the first season, so they didn’t exist until this season. They just went around and just took all of the best players from all of the other clubs. So essentially, Arkadag is the Turkmenistan national team.
Incidentally, I’m unfortunately not allowed to go back into Turkmenistan, but my contacts in Turkmenistan tell me that local football fans are none too amused by this. Needless to say, all of their top stars have all been raided to put together this vanity team.
But even if you put together all of the best players in Turkmenistan onto one team, it doesn’t produce a particularly good team. And in the end, because it’s so sort of uncompetitive now, arguably, I think the quality of football is probably going to decline in Turkmenistan as a result.
So I don’t think it’s really worth attributing that kind of long-term vision. As far as their kind of sportswashing angle of things in Turkmenistan, I think they’re putting much more effort in cycling. Cycling is something that is really being promoted a great deal by the state, football I think is just a nice little add on.
Is their existence helpful or harmful for Turkmen football?
There’s a bunch of things that Turkmenistan doesn’t have. I mean, for example, unlike other countries in the area, all of the other former Soviet states, you don’t get Legionnaires in Turkmenistan. So there’s not a lot of exposure to international football in Turkmenistan.
The creation of this team, raiding all of the best players from other teams, that’s kind of hobbled the quality of the league. Now, I don’t want to cast aspersions on Arkadag, they are obviously the best team in the league now. The fact they’ve won every single match obviously looks a little bit absurd. I mean, there were a couple of matches this season in which they suspiciously left it quite late in the game to actually win courtesy of a penalty.
I recall a few weeks ago that they even went down, they were even a goal down at one point, and they managed to claw victory from the jaws of defeat in the 95th minute, courtesy of a penalty. Unfortunately, I did not see the match, it’s quite hard to catch up on Turkmen football, but you know, one can only wonder if there’s some kind of conversation with VAR around that.
But anyway, I mean, none of this is good for football. I think that goes without saying. But more broadly speaking, the fact that Turkmenistan are so closed off to the world means that you can’t have things like… incidentally, a couple of countries in the area, like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, just opened up, and they are also kind of vanity projects, but they do still have some worth.
They’ve opened up these local football academies tied to win with the European team. So Juventus has an academy in Tajikistan, and then I want to say, I think it’s Barcelona has one in Kyrgyzstan. I don’t know in reality what the value of these academies is, but the fact that they exist tells you those countries want to learn from abroad to raise the standard of the game domestically.
In Turkmenistan, you just couldn’t really have anything like that, because it was so difficult to for people to actually go to Turkmenistan as trainers, as consultants and so the prospects are not great. The thing that in these countries really motivates the players is that the governments tend to place a great deal of priority on sporting success. So that’s the motivation.
If you can secure a triumph, even a mini triumph, getting out of a group or beating one team or another, you attain the sort of heroic status, in ways that are not… I mean, obviously that happens in any country, but it’s sort of hero status and a kind of of a different order than you would get in lots of other countries.
Could they open themselves up to foreign stars to be more competitive in Asia?
I mean, look, it’s possible the ex-President, who I was talking about, has not been President since last year. The new president is his son (Serdar Berdimuhamedow). So (he’s) really not branching out in a very, wildly different direction, but he is younger, and he’s lived abroad, and so the uber optimist, among which I probably don’t count myself, think of him as someone who might slightly open up Turkmenistan to the world. And if that happens, then, yeah, I could see that could affect the sporting world positively.
However, from where I’m standing now, I don’t see, I’m afraid, room for optimism because I can’t imagine how far down your career trajectory you’d have to be to say, ‘yeah, I might go and end my career playing for Ahal FC, or whatever. I just don’t see that happening. Football is such a competitive sport, and I think Turkmenistan knows that (it) probably doesn’t have great prospects.
What they tend to do is to focus on more familiar minority sports, wrestling and all of these combat sports tend to be very popular in that part of the world. And so if they’re going to get glory, I think those are the avenues they’re more likely to explore.
I think football is so popular, I mean, it is extremely popular, there’s no getting away from that. Second only to horse racing in Turkmenistan, horses are the main thing.
So I think that the ex-President just wanted to maybe garnish himself a little bit in the glory of having a successful sporting team domestically in his name.
One of the first things you see when you walk out of the dressing rooms at the Köpetdag Stadium in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat is a giant portrait – but not any kind of portrait.
Visiting teams, making their way out onto the pitch at the 20,000-capacity stadium, are greeted by an oversized portrait of the nation’s former president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, on a bicycle in a white pant-suit.
It’s a striking image, but one that is not at all unfamiliar in one of Asia’s most isolated and reclusive nations.
Photos: Asian Football Confederation
