Fabio Cannavaro

Fabio Cannavaro arrived in Tashkent on 6 October 2025 as the most decorated name ever to take charge of the Uzbekistan national team. The 2006 World Cup-winning Italy captain and Ballon d’Or laureate inherited a side that had already done the unthinkable — Timur Kapadze had secured Uzbekistan’s first-ever World Cup qualification four months earlier, on 5 June 2025. The federation’s pivot from the man who got them there to a global name was not about results but about exposure: a tournament debut needs tournament-grade structure, and Cannavaro’s career has been defined by defensive organisation in elite environments.

His coaching CV is genuinely well-travelled — Al-Ahli Dubai, two spells at Guangzhou Evergrande (winning the 2019 Chinese Super League), Tianjin Quanjian, a brief caretaker stretch with the China national team, then a European loop through Benevento, Udinese (a successful relegation-survival appointment in 2024), and Dinamo Zagreb (fired after 14 matches in April 2025). The Dinamo dismissal is the obvious caveat. The Evergrande record — 79 wins from 132 matches across the second spell — is the obvious recommendation. Cannavaro coaches as he played: read the game, hold the shape, manage the lead. He has brought his trusted Italian staff with him to Uzbekistan — assistant Eugenio Albarella, fitness coach Francesco Troise, and goalkeeping coach Antonio Chimenti.

Through the first seven months he has gone 3W-3D-1L across friendlies and AFC fixtures, gradually shifting Uzbekistan toward the compact 4-4-2 / 4-2-3-1 hybrid he favours. The brief in Group K (Portugal, Colombia, DR Congo) is not to qualify out of it — it is to make the team look like it belongs at a World Cup. If Uzbekistan exits the tournament with their defensive shape intact and one credible result against either Colombia or DR Congo, Cannavaro will have done his job.