Tajikistan National Football Team - History

History

After the split of Soviet Union, they played their first match against Uzbekistan on 17 June 1992. It was not until 1994 that the Tajikistan National Football Federation was admitted to FIFA.

Tajikistan played its first official game on 11 April 1994 in Tashkent as part of a regional tournament. They lost that game against Kazakhstan 0:1. The first official competition the team entered was the Asian Nations Cup 1996 when it was seeded in the three-team Group 8 with Uzbekistan and Bahrain. Bahrain later withdrew leaving Tajikistan to play-off against their Middle Asian neighbors. Tajikistan won the first game 4:0, but were beaten in the away game 0:5 after extra time. They did not enter the World Cup qualifying competition until the France 1998 edition, recording four victories in their preliminary group stage including a 5–0 triumph over Turkmenistan, and losing only to China, which placed them second behind their eastern neighbors but out of the competition.

In a three-team qualifying section for Korea/Japan 2002, they had a record 16–0 win over Guam before losing 2–0 to Iran. After beating Bangladesh 4–0 on aggregate in the preliminary round of qualifiers for Germany 2006, they held AFC Asian Cup semi-finalists and eventual group winners Bahrain to a goalless draw on 31 March 2004.

The team won its first international tournament, the inaugural AFC Challenge Cup, in 2006, beating Sri Lanka 4–0 in Dhaka.

Read more about this topic:  Tajikistan National Football Team

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.
    Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)

    The custard is setting; meanwhile
    I not only have my own history to worry about
    But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
    Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
    Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.
    Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)