Kokand-1912

In 2010, Kokand-1912 stopped existing. No stadium controversy, no relegation drama — the club simply ceased operations, a century of football in the Fergana Valley going quiet for two years. When it came back in 2012, it came back under a new name that pointed straight at the year it began: not Mekhnat, not Avtomobilist, not Temiryulchi — just Kokand-1912, as if the club had decided to stop apologising for its age and start wearing it.

The name had changed more times than most clubs manage in a century. It started as Muskomanda, a team drawn from the city's Muslim community, before Soviet policy scrubbed the religious reference in 1925 and left it simply Kokand. Mekhnat followed in 1950, Avtomobilist in 1988, then Temiryulchi on the eve of Uzbek independence in 1992 — the season the club also recorded its best-ever league finish, fourth place, before dropping back down. Every rebrand tracked the decade it happened in; the football underneath kept going regardless.

A domestic cup runner-up finish in 1992 and a second-tier title in 1997 remain the fullest shelf the club can point to — modest by the standards of Uzbek football's bigger names, but enough to keep Kokand-1912 in the conversation as the oldest football club anywhere in Central Asia. Coach Nomon Hasanov built much of what came after around youth development rather than marquee signings, a slower route back that paid off in 2014, when a second-place finish in the First League returned the club to the Superleague.

Home games are still played at Markaziy Stadion, the Central Stadium, in front of a capacity of 12,278 in light blue and white. Locally the team is known as the Swallows — Qaldirg'ochlar — a nickname that has outlasted every name change the club itself went through.