Asia Talas

Talas sits in the north-west of Kyrgyzstan, a valley town of a few tens of thousands with no top-flight football to its name. That changed when the Premier League decided to widen its field to 16 clubs for 2026, and a side was put together in November 2025 with the backing of the politician Omurbek Babanov to fill one of the new places. The town's Central Stadium had to be rebuilt before it could host anything; the club waited for the work to finish and now plays in front of 5,000.

The first appointment said a good deal about the ambition. Maksim Shatskikh, whose coaching work in the region includes spells at Pakhtakor, Andijan and Alga, took the job the same month the club came into being. His first competitive fixture, on 7 March 2026, went badly: Talant won 4-1, and the only thing Asia took from the afternoon was a penalty converted by the Ukrainian forward Mykola Ahapov, the first goal the club ever scored.

What followed was not what a newly promoted side is meant to do. Asia finished the league season fifth, with 10 wins and only 3 defeats, and scored 38 goals along the way — an attacking record that had little to do with the team beaten in its opening match. The cup run ended in the quarter-finals, where Muras United got over the line 2-1 in extra time.

Several of the squad were called up while the season was still running. Artyom Istrashkin and Bakyt Mirzalim uulu went to the Kyrgyzstan Olympic side at under-23 level, and Aleksey Savelyev was invited by Latvia. For a club playing its first year in the division, that is three internationals produced from a standing start.