It’s the sort of investment a middle-ranking football club dreams of. They stake a modest €100,000 to secure a player of evident potential but untested in the elite leagues of the game. Eighteen months later, they are in advanced talks to sell him for 500 times that fee.
The negotiators here are Lens, the French club who have spent more of the past 15 years in Ligue 2 than in Ligue 1, and Manchester City, who have been Premier League champions eight times in that period. City have a good eye for a player: If they are willing to consider a commitment of €50m - €10m of that in bonuses - for Abdukodir Khusanov, it means they have identified a potential superstar, a future household name.
Khusanov is only 20, and if his career seems to have soared very suddenly, that’s a lot to do with his age. But it’s also about his country of origin.
Uzbekistan – whose national teams, at youth and senior level, are competitive in Asia – tends to export few players to the wealthier leagues of Europe or the Middle East. Assuming City complete the deal taking Khusanov from Lens to Lancashire, he would become the first Uzbek player employed in England’s hugely cosmopolitan top division.
Lens can congratulate themselves on their foresight. They sought information on the central defender while he was a strikingly mature, if little known teenager.
They assigned one of the scouts, Baptiste Favier, to study how the then 19-year-old performed at the 2023 Under-20 World Cup, a tournament taking place a long way from his home, and with a number of recognised future stars on the cast list.
Uzbekistan faced the hosts, Argentina, on the opening night, and, against the odds, they took the lead. The advantage would soon be erased by striker Alejo Veliz, on whom there were many more expert eyes focused that evening.
But though Veliz had escaped a marker to score an equaliser that Argentina would build on to win the match 2-1, Favier was impressed that when Khusanov was directly policing Veliz – who joined Tottenham Hotspur later that summer – the striker was well marshalled.
“It was an interesting duel with him and Khusanov,” Favier recalled to L’Equipe, "because Veliz was physically powerful and strong in the air.”
The next three matches, up to the Uzbekistan’s under-20s departing the competition at the last-16 stage, confirmed Lens’ impression that here, in the back three of the Central European team’s line up, was an exceptionally precocious talent.
Khusanov showed a sharp turn of pace when playing in a high line, an agility in his interceptions and blocks when close to his own goal. He looked comfortable on the ball and confident and accurate in his passing.
Lens promptly made an approach to the Belarus club Energetik-BGU of Minsk, who had signed Khusanov as an 18-year-old from Bunyodkor of his native Tashkent. The six-figure transfer fee to Lens was agreed.
Very quickly, Lens realised they had achieved a major coup. “We have a 19-year-old who looks more like a player of 25 when he’s on the pitch,” decided the then Lens head coach Franck Haise, after giving Khusanov some run-outs in pre-season friendlies ahead of the 2023/24 season, including a few minutes in a prestige game against Manchester United at Old Trafford.
By late autumn, a player with only 37 senior appearances in the Belarus league on his club resume when he came to France was starting in the Uefa Champions League and establishing himself as a regular in Lens’ Ligue 1 line-ups.
“What we saw in him were things we hadn’t expected in someone so young in his position,” said Haise. “He’s tough, he’s calm, he reads the game well and knows how to use the ball.”
There was evidence of his stamina, too. That breakthrough season followed fast on the junior World Cup in Argentina, demanded he adapt rapidly to French football and then at the Asian Cup in Qatar for the senior Uzbekistan team, for which the experienced former UAE coach Srecko Katanec had called him up for his first full caps ahead of the tournament.
Uzbekistan reached the quarter-finals, where, without Khusanov - suspended for collecting two yellow cards across previous matches - Uzbekistan were defeated by the hosts and eventual champions on penalties.
His second season with Lens has projected him still further. By last summer, with the Olympic Games taking place in France, Lens teammates were joking with Khusanov that, so athletic, so strong, and so fast was he that he could represent his country at almost any sport in the Games.
He was involved, but the Uzbek men’s team, defeated by Spain and Egypt, were eliminated at the group phase – a blessing for Lens new head coach Will Still because he had Khusanov ready to take his place in defence earlier than might have been feared in the domestic season.
Still suspected even then that Lens would not be able to keep the player for long, that bids too high, too transformative for the club’s budget to resist would arrive. Real Madrid were linked with the player. So were Newcastle United.
A leading international agent was mandated by the French club to maximise the sale price. An initial aspiration for a fee of some €25m quickly appeared unambitious and the real price would creeping up closer to the fee Manchester United were last summer prepared to pay to another French club, Lille, for 19-year-old centre-back Lenny Yoro.
The modern market has put a premium on defenders who reach early maturity and master a skill-set that elite football expects to be more and more varied, with the emphasis not only on containment but on carrying the ball forward picking precise long passes and switching position.
City have often raised the bar in this respect. They committed an estimated €90m on Josko Gvardiol when he was 21 and at RB Leipzig, identifying the Croatian as a good fit for a system where defenders are expected to fulfill the roles of centre-back and full-back, to push smoothly into midfield.
In the case of Khusanov, or ‘Kodir’ as he’s known to his Lens teammates, there remain some rough edges to iron out, but the view from France is that a long career at the very summit of the club game is all but certain.
As for his international future, there’s a genuine chance he’ll be a star of the first Uzbekistan team to reach a World Cup. In the chase for places at the 2026 tournament, his country currently occupy the second of two automatic qualifying spots in Asian Qualifying Group A. Best placed to leapfrog them are UAE, three points behind Uzbekistan but defeated 1-0 in Tashkent in October. The countries meet again in early June, with Khusanov shaping up as an ever formidable barrier to UAE aspirations.
