The «Arkadag» players scored a double. They added the Turkmenistan Cup to the gold medals of the national championship, winning a convincing victory in the final with a score of 3:0 over last year’s trophy winner, two-time Champions League participant AFC «Ahal».
For «Ahal», which has already won the second most important club trophy four times, this was already the seventh final in the history of the tournament. And for FC «Arkadag», formed in April of this year, it is the first.
On the way to the final, «Ahal» beat Turkmenbashy’s Shagadam twice (4:1 at home and 3:0 away) and, based on the sum of two meetings, turned out to be stronger than «Merv» (1:1 in Mary and 1:0 in Ashgabat). And «Arkadag» in the preliminary round of the Turkmenistan Cup twice with the same score 4:0 prevailed over the Mary «Energetik», then in the quarterfinals they confidently beat the capital’s «Kopetdag» twice (5:1 - on the opponent’s field and 4:1 - at home), and in the semi-finals they also beat the 2018 AFC Cup finalist «Altyn Asyr» in two matches (4:1 away and 4:0 at home).
Before the cup game, «Arkadag» and «Ahal» played each other three times in the Turkmenistan Championship. And «Arkadag» won in all three matches: 5:2, 3:2 and 2:1.
The final match of the Turkmenistan Cup 2023 also took place with a noticeable advantage of Arkadag, which opened the scoring in the 29th minute after an accurate shot from close range by Abdy Bashimov. In the 52nd minute, after a corner from the left side, he scored a double with a header and increased the advantage of the tournament debutant to 2:0. And on the 68th, Ilya Tamurkin intercepted the ball after an «Ahal» player’s mistake, entered the opponent’s penalty area and irresistibly shot into the far upper corner of the goal from the left corner of the goalkeeper’s goal.
Having brought the match to victory, the «Arkadag» players won their second trophy in one season. The team representing the city of national importance of the same name was led to this success by the 43-year-old well-known former striker of the Turkmenistan national team, winner of the 2003/04 Russian Cup as part of the Grozny «Terek» and the 2013 AFC President’s Cup as part of «Balkan» as head coach Vladimir Bayramov.
