NEWS
TURKMEN FOOTBALLER BRINGS VICTORY TO THE CLUB FROM HONG KONG IN THE AFC CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Turkmen footballer Ruslan Mingazov brought victory to the Hong Kong club "Kitchi" over the Thai "Chiangrai United" - 1:0 in the AFC Champions League. The 30-year-old midfielder of the national team of Turkmenistan, who was recognized as the best player of the match, scored the decisive goal in the 17th minute of the game with a shot from outside the penalty area into the lower right corner of the goal.
For R.Mingazov, this was his debut in the main Asian club tournament, in which, together with the Kitchi and Chiangrai United teams, the Japanese club Vissel Kobe also contested a ticket to the 1/8 finals in group J.
All matches of this group are held in Buriram, the administrative center of one of the northeastern provinces of Thailand.
Ruslan is a pupil of the honored coach of Turkmenistan Vasily Karpov and the son of the famous winger of the Ashgabat Kopetdag and the national team of Turkmenistan Kamil Mingazov. In 2008, as part of Ashgabat, he became the champion and owner of the Super Cup of Turkmenistan. Since 2009, he has been regularly called up to the national team of Turkmenistan, for which he played 26 matches, scoring 4 goals in them.
Ruslan also played in Europe in a number of teams. As part of the Riga Skonto, he became the champion of Latvia in 2010, the owner of the Cup in 2012 and the Super Cup in 2013 of this country, as well as the winner of the Baltic League in 2011.
Ruslan Mingazov is also the first Turkmen football player who played in the Czech Championship for the clubs Jablonec, Slavia, Mlada Boleslav, Pribram. In the 2016/17 season, he won gold medals in the national championship with Slavia Prague.
After the Czech stage of his career, he played for the Kazakhstani clubs Irtysh, Shakhtar and Kaspiy.
In March of this year, Ruslan Mingazov signed a contract with Kitchee as a free agent, becoming the first Turkmen legionnaire in the Hong Kong Football Championship.
The new club of R. Mingazov was formed in 1931. Kitchee is the reigning 11-time Hong Kong Champion. The team is a regular participant in the AFC Champions League.
In the next round of this tournament, Kitchi will play with the Japanese club Vissel Kobe, for which the 37-year-old one of the most outstanding football players on the planet plays - the 2010 world champion and two-time European champion in 2008 and 2012 as part of the Spanish national team, four-time League winner UEFA champions, three-time winner of the UEFA Super Cup and three-time winner of the Club World Cup in the Spanish "Barcelona" Andres Iniesta.