Pakhtakor

When Tashkent's Spartak was wound up, the republic's cotton-growers' association took its place in Uzbek football and gave the new club a name that needs no translating from Uzbek: paxtakor, cotton grower.

The record that defines the club was built after 1992 — sixteen Uzbek championships, the latest in 2023, and fourteen domestic cups, the latest in 2025. The 2022 championship was won under Maksim Shatskikh, once the club's forward and the Uzbekistan national team's record scorer.

Gennadi Krasnitsky remains the leading scorer with more than 200 goals, ahead of Berador Abduraimov's 131 in 358 appearances; Gennadi Denisov holds the appearance record at 371. Server Djeparov, twice voted Asia's footballer of the year, and Dragan Ceran, who scored 109 goals in 158 games between 2018 and 2024, carried the club through the independence era. Games against Bunyodkor are Tashkent's own derby; against Neftchi, from Fergana, they are billed as Uzbekistan's El Clásico.

The Central Pakhtakor Stadium opened in 1956 with 60,000 seats; the 1996 reconstruction brought that down to 55,000, and further work in 2008 and 2012 left the current capacity at 35,000.