The World Cup traditionally brings together the strongest football players on the planet, and the 2022 tournament will not be an exception. However, the organizers from Qatar, as is usually the case, failed to get all the big stars. Several strong teams were unexpectedly left out of the World Cup, having failed the qualification. From the celebrities who miss the upcoming World Cup, you can make several solid clubs!

The IOC recently volunteered to rank the top losses of the tournament. True, the final choice of the Olympic Committee turned out to be very unusual. Among the superstars of world football, for example, suddenly turned out to be … yesterday’s student of Valery Karpin.

He turned out to be cooler than Russians, Ukrainians and even European champions.

On a par with Holland and Salah

The ex-footballer of Rostov Eldor Shomurodov, who represents the national team of Uzbekistan at the international level, did not get the opportunity to play at the 2022 World Cup – but he got into the lens of attention of the International Olympic Committee. The IOC website presented a list of the top 10 football players who, for various reasons, will miss the World Cup.

Among the stars that fans will not see in Qatar, the IOC singled out the Norwegian Erling Haaland, the Swede Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Egyptian Mohamed Salah. Roma’s Uzbek forward was on a par with the greats. Shomurodov took eighth place in the ranking, ahead of Algerian Riyad Mahrez and the only reigning European champion on the list, Italian Gianluigi Donnarumma.

Eldor Shomurodov, 2019 / Photo: © Fred Lee / Contributor / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

While some world football stars were left without the World Cup due to injuries, Shomurodov will not go to Qatar for a more prosaic reason. The national team of Uzbekistan performed unsuccessfully in the qualification, leaving the race long before the decisive matches.

Probably, there is nothing surprising in this – Uzbekistan has never managed to overcome the qualifying barrier. Twice in the 21st century, the players of the Central Asian Republic stopped a step away from direct tickets, and then invariably lost in the joints of the Asian selection. On the eve of the World Cup in Qatar, the “white wolves” finished their journey much earlier than usual. Already in the second round, the team stumbled, giving first place in the group to Saudi Arabia. Among the second teams of the round, Uzbekistan failed to get into the top 5, which meant for the team the end of the struggle for a ticket to Qatar.

It is not entirely correct to blame Shomurodov for the failures of the national team. The captain did almost everything in his power – he scored seven goals in eight games, writing down more than a third of the team’s total goals. But there are no more players of a comparable level in Uzbekistan. So we have to complain about the general not the highest, even by Asian standards, the class of the team.

Tolerant approach

It is difficult to say whether Shomurodov is unconditionally the strongest footballer from the post-Soviet space. And if we talk about global scale, then there are even more questions about the choice of the IOC. However, the experts, guided by some of their own considerations, considered that the Uzbek player was somehow better than Alexander Golovin, Alexander Zinchenko, and even each of the Italian football players who flew past the World Cup.

Denying Eldor’s talent is stupid. Shomurodov’s star rose in Rostov, where, under the leadership of Valery Karpin, a football player from Central Asia became one of the strongest strikers in the Premier League. The player seriously claimed leadership in the scoring race of the 2019/20 season, but in the end let a large group of competitors go ahead, taking only seventh place.

Eldor Shomurodov / Photo: © Epsilon / Stringer / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

Nevertheless, the striker became interested in Italy. In October 2020, Eldor officially moved to Serie A, to Genoa, a medium-sized club by local standards. Having scored eight goals in his debut season, the striker has already entered the sphere of interests of the club from among the giants. In August 2021, the former Rostov footballer joined Roma.

In the team of Jose Mourinho, Shomurodov acted more in the wake of the leaders, scoring five goals in all competitions in his debut season. But at the same time he managed to become the winner of the Conference League. In the new season, Eldor has played little so far – a total of 37 minutes after nine rounds of Serie A and another 23 minutes in the Europa League. The player scored the only goal of the season against Ludogorets.

For comparison, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, another representative of the post-Soviet space, has already scored seven goals in another Italian team and made the same number of assists. Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Alexander Golovin, Ruslan Malinovsky are not yet enchanting in their clubs, but at least they have fewer problems with match practice. Comparing Shomurodov’s results with those of Holland, who is on the same list, is completely inconvenient.

Why the IOC decided that among the losses of Qatar should be an Uzbek, is completely unclear. The only thought that comes to mind when looking at the list is that the compilers simply wanted all football regions to be represented on their list to the maximum, and the performance of the players here played a secondary role. True, this approach cannot be called fair.