Embassy News
Diplomatic Soccer Tournament
This past weekend the United States Embassy in Tashkent made its triumphant return to football (European style) in Tashkent. Participants from Embassies across the city showed up to give it their best in a 4-on-4 tournament. Our Local Guard Force (LGF) fielded a team of outstanding players to participate in this Embassy soccer tournament. Not to be outdone, accredited diplomats and their families managed to convince over a dozen people that we were not too old to go out and represent the USA in some friendly competition. Elimination matches were scheduled all day on Saturday, with a wonderful opening ceremony hosted by the Uzbekistan government.
Sunday saw our LGF team reach the final match, taking 2nd place in a very competitive bracket. Two corporate-sponsored teams, DHL and Beeline, took 1st place and 3rd place, respectively. While our diplomatic squad did not reach the playoffs, we were able to play some tough games against the Italians (0:5), Russians (1:9) and members of the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) (6:7). Among the diplomatic missions, the Russian team took 1st place, the MFA placed 2nd, and the Kazakhs - 3rd. The tournament award for “Best Striker” went to our own Ambassador Norland for his 2 goals in the latter half of the MFA game.
Congrats to all the players and our supporters who spent a wonderful weekend in the spirit of teamwork and camaraderie. A special thanks to Evgeniy Klimov for captaining the LGF team, Mark Geskey for captaining the diplomat team, and Traci Parks for arranging our participation. We will see all of you at practice for next year!
