BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct. 4 - Sports journalist Natiq Mukhtarly has urged the Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan, or AFFA, to acknowledge the depth of the country’s football problems and build a nationwide youth development system, arguing that replacing national-team coaches will not produce lasting results.
Mukhtarly said the structural weaknesses he wrote about nearly two decades ago remain largely unchanged. Looking back at articles he published in 2008, he said he found himself making the same arguments about how Azerbaijani football should be rebuilt.
“Everything starts with youth football,” Mukhtarly said in comments reported by Vesti Baku, which cited a video interview.
A Problem Unchanged Since 2008
Mukhtarly said he made the same warning when Ayxan Abbasov was appointed: under the current player-development system, a breakthrough should not be expected from a change of coach alone.
He called on AFFA to openly recognize the scale of the problem and present a long-term development program. In his view, Azerbaijan lacks the broad base needed to produce a new generation of competitive players.
The journalist said he had previously spoken of a 15-year horizon for meaningful results. With reforms still delayed, he said, the point at which those results might appear has moved even further into the future.
His comments focused on youth training, regional football schools and systematic scouting rather than short-term changes to the senior national team.
Regional Schools and Scouting
To illustrate the kind of regional network he believes is needed, Mukhtarly recalled a conversation in 2010 with the secretary general of the Georgian Football Federation. According to Mukhtarly, the official said at the time that the federation operated 156 football schools in villages and settlements. The figure referred to that 2010 conversation and was not presented as a current count for Georgia.
Mukhtarly directed his appeal to AFFA President Rovshan Najaf, saying the federation’s leadership must be consistently present outside Baku and work directly in the country’s districts.
“Travel from village to village. There are so many talented children there,” he said, calling for football schools and a regional scouting network capable of identifying young players early and guiding their development.
Mukhtarly’s remarks amount to a call for a sustained institutional program: build local training centers, expand the pool of young players and create a system that can find talent across Azerbaijan. Without those foundations, he argued, another coaching change would address only the most visible part of a much deeper problem.
Sources: Vesti Baku; video interview.