The year 2023 started successfully for the football player of the national team of Turkmenistan Ruslan Mingazov in the Hong Kong Kitchee. Last month, the 31-year-old pupil of Ashgabat football won the first trophy - the Hong Kong Senior Shield - as part of this club.
R.Mingazov's team achieved this success by defeating the reigning champion Eastern in the final in the penalty shoot-out - 4:2 (in regular and extra time - 1:1). In this match, Ruslan came out in the main team and spent the whole game on the field.
The trophy winners received HK$150,000 in prize money, while the losing team in the final received HK$50,000.
The Hong Kong Senior Shield tournament was founded in 1895 and is one of the thirty oldest football competitions in the world. Kitchee won this trophy for the eighth time.
And the other day Ruslan Mingazov scored a goal in the winning match of the 10th round of the Hong Kong Premier League with the Sham Shui Po team. The Turkmen midfielder scored in the 13th minute of the game, which ended with a score of 7:0 in favor of Kitchee.
R.Mingazov now has 10 goals on his account, and he takes the second place in the Hong Kong championship scorer dispute, 1 goal behind the leader, legionnaire from Montenegro Dejan Damyanovich.
Having won the ninth victory in the championship, "Kitchee" with 27 points takes first place in the standings. Li Man is in second position with 24 points.
Ruslan is a pupil of the honored coach of Turkmenistan Vasily Karpov and the son of the famous winger of Ashgabat Kopetdag and the national team of Turkmenistan Kamil Mingazov. In 2008, as part of Ashgabat, he became the champion and owner of the Super Cup of Turkmenistan. Since 2009, he has been regularly called up to the national team of Turkmenistan, for which he played 26 matches, scoring 4 goals in them.
Ruslan also played in a number of European teams. As part of the Riga Skonto, he became the champion of Latvia in 2010, the owner of the Cup in 2012 and the Super Cup in 2013 of this country, as well as the winner of the Baltic League in 2011.
Ruslan Mingazov is also the first Turkmen footballer who played in the Czech Championship for the clubs Jablonec, Slavia, Mlada Boleslav, Pribram. In the 2016/17 season, he won gold medals in the national championship with Slavia Prague.
After the Czech stage of his career, he played for the Kazakhstani clubs Irtysh, Shakhtar and Kaspiy.
In March 2022, Ruslan Mingazov signed a contract with Kitchee as a free agent, becoming the first Turkmen legionnaire in the Hong Kong Football Championship.
Last year, Ruslan made a successful debut as part of the Hong Kong club in the main Asian club tournament - the AFC Champions League, scoring the winning goal against Thailand's Chiang Rai United - 1:0. It is noteworthy that in two fights with this team, which took place in Buriram, the administrative center of one of the northeastern provinces of Thailand, our compatriot was recognized as the best player both times.
In total, R. Mingazov scored 13 goals in 18 matches in the Kitchee jersey and was repeatedly recognized as the best player of the team in the matches of the Hong Kong Premier League.
In 2023, the Kitchee football club announced the extension of the contract with the Turkmen midfielder Ruslan Mingazov. The term of the new agreement is calculated until 2025.
“I am very pleased to sign a new contract with Kitchee,” Ruslan commented on this event. “My family and I love it here. Although I spent only half a year in Hong Kong, it seems that all five or six years have passed. I have many wonderful memories of Hong Kong. I expect to win the Hong Kong championship with the Kitchee team in the next two years.”
FC Kitchee was founded in 1931 and is the 11-time champion of Hong Kong.
In the winter transfer window, the roster of this Hong Kong club was strengthened by the 34-year-old striker of the Republic of Korea national team Kim Shin Wook, who had previously played for Singapore's Lion City Sailors FC and quite successfully. In 26 Singapore Championship matches, he scored 21 goals. At the end of 2022, Kim Sin Wook, having scored 4 hat tricks, got into the top 5 in the "King of Hat Tricks" nomination according to the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS) along with the 2018 world champion Kylian Mbappe and other eminent football players.
Kim Shin Wook is one of the tallest players in the Republic of Korea national team with a height of 197 centimeters. On September 10, 2019, as part of the Korean team, he played against the national team of Turkmenistan in the qualifying match of the 2022 World Cup at the Kopetdag stadium in Ashgabat. The game ended with the score 2:0 in favor of the guests. In total, Kim Sin Wook, as part of the national team of the Republic of Korea, held 55 meetings, in which he scored 16 goals.
