Merw

The football club that carries the region's older name has spent its independent-era life in the Ýokary Liga without ever finishing top. The nearest it came was second place in 2012; before that came bronze in 1994, then again in 2004 and 2009.

The team that plays there now was rebuilt in 1991, at the moment Turkmenistan stopped being a Soviet republic. It went through three names before settling: Lokomotiv until 1966, Murgab for a single season, then Garagum — the desert north of the city — from 1968 to 1989. Under those names it won the Turkmen SSR championship six times and spent four scattered seasons in the Soviet Second League, the last two of them in 1990 and 1991, just as the competition itself was ending.

Cup football has its own rules, and Merw's silverware has all come from it. The 2005 Turkmenistan Cup was the club's first national trophy of any kind. The second, in 2008, came with the Super Cup attached the same year — the only occasion Merw has held two pieces of silverware from one campaign. Green and yellow, home matches at the Sport Toplumy, ten thousand seats.

The ground carries the same name as the club's full title, Mary Sport Toplumy, which is the sort of arrangement that tells you the football team and the town's sports complex were never really separate things.