Ilyos Zeytulayev (; born 13 July 1982) is an Uzbek retired

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...

who played as a

midfielder In the sport of association football, a midfielder takes an Glossary of association football terms#O, outfield position primarily in the middle of the pitch. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in t ...

or as a

forward Forward is a relative direction, the opposite of backward. Forward may also refer to: People *Forward (surname) Sports * Forward (association football) * Forward (basketball), including: ** Point forward ** Power forward (basketball) ** Smal ...

. He is currently the head coach of

Uzbekistan Super League Uzbekistan Super League (; ), known as Artel Electronics, Artel Uzbekistan Super League due to sponsorship reasons (; ), is the top division of professional association football, football in Uzbekistan. It is operated under the auspices of the U ...

club

Bunyodkor Football Club Bunyodkor () is an Uzbek professional football club based in Tashkent that competes in the Uzbekistan Super League. Bunyodkor, a relatively unknown club at the time, made international headlines when it claimed to be close to sig ...

. Zeytulayev has spent most of his career in the Italian

Serie B The Serie B (), officially known as Serie BKT for sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie A. It has been operating for over ninety years since the 1929–30 season. It had b ...

and

Lega Pro Prima Divisione Serie C1 was the third highest football league in Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into ...

(formerly Serie C1). His first name is sometimes spelled Illyos, or Ilyas (Cyrillic: Ильяс), the latter of which is the Russian equivalent. Moreover, Zeytulayev is also romanized as Zeytulaev.

Club career

Zeytulayev started his professional career in the

Juventus Juventus Football Club (; from , ), commonly known as Juventus or colloquially as Juve (), is an Italian professional Association football, football List of football clubs in Italy, club based in Turin, Piedmont, who compete in Serie A, the ...

youth teams along with Serhiy Kovalenko and Viktor Budyanskiy, making him the first Uzbekistani player to play in Italy. He signed a 5-year contract on 10 August 2001. He joined Juve permanently in February 2002 along with Kovalenko after a loan from Sportakademklub Moscow, the team he played since he was 13. The

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

club paid US$400,000 (about €454K) to buy the duo's image and registration rights. He also played both legs against

Sampdoria Unione Calcio Sampdoria, commonly referred to as Sampdoria (), is an Italian professional football club based in Genoa, Liguria. Sampdoria was formed in 1946 from the merger of two existing sports clubs whose roots can be traced back to the ...

in the

Coppa Italia 2001–02 Coppa or COPPA may refer to: * ''Coppa'' or ''capocollo'', a type of Italian pork cold cut * Montonico bianco, a white Italian wine grape variety grown in the Calabria region of southern Italy * Coppa (surname) * Coppa Italia, a domestic Italian le ...

Reggina and various loans

After graduating from the U20 team in June, along with Viktor Budyanskiy, they were unable to register both as Juve players. At first,

FIGC The Italian Football Federation (, ; FIGC ), known colloquially as (), is the governing body of football in Italy. It is based in Rome and the technical department is in Coverciano, Florence. It manages and coordinates the Italian football l ...

declared that their remaining 2-year contracts did not fulfill the regulations and voided them. The FIGC declared that they had been on youth contracts which could only run for a maximum of 3 years. In addition, a non-EU player at that time could not sign a contract extension. Thus, they were released. However, after an appeal, the appeal community stated that a foreigner could sign a professional contract regardless of his age, and FIGC regulations only protected domestic youth products who can only sign a contract for more than three years after the age of 18. They were transferred to Reggina for €1K to co-own the players in January 2005, He played in his first Serie A match on 19 March 2005, coming on as a substitute for

Marco Borriello Marco Borriello (; born 18 June 1982) is an Italian former professional Association football, footballer who played as a Forward (association football)#Striker, striker. Throughout his career, Borriello played for several Italian clubs, includin ...

in the 75th minutes against his first club Juve. The match ended in a 0–1 loss. In June 2005, Juventus bought back Budyanskiy for €0.5K, while Reggina signed Zeytulayev permanently for the same price. After not playing in the

2005–06 Serie A The 2005–06 Serie A (known as the Serie A TIM for sponsorship reasons) was the 104th season of top-tier Italian football, the 74th in a round-robin tournament. The league commenced on 28 August 2005 and finished on 14 May 2006. While Juventus w ...

, in January 2006, he was loaned out to Serie B side

Crotone Crotone (; ; or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Calabria, Italy. Founded as the Achaean colony of Kroton ( or ; ), it became a great Greek city, home of the renowned mathematician-philosopher Pythagoras amongst other famous citizens, and one ...

. In 2006–07 season, he was loaned out again, this time to

Genoa Genoa ( ; ; ) is a city in and the capital of the Italian region of Liguria, and the sixth-largest city in Italy. As of 2025, 563,947 people live within the city's administrative limits. While its metropolitan city has 818,651 inhabitan ...

and

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; or , archaically ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, where it straddles the Bacchiglione, River Bacchiglione. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and e ...

of Serie B (as an exchange with Ivan Castiglia).

Lega Pro Prima Divisione

In July 2007, he left for

Verona Verona ( ; ; or ) is a city on the Adige, River Adige in Veneto, Italy, with 255,131 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region, and is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and in Northeast Italy, nor ...

of Serie C1. But after a poor season, he left for

Pescara Pescara (; ; ) is the capital city of the province of Pescara, in the Abruzzo Regions of Italy, region of Italy. It is the most populated city in Abruzzo, with 118,657 (January 1, 2023) residents (and approximately 350,000 including the surround ...

on a free transfer. There, he became a regular member of the team. In August 2009, he signed a 3-year contract with

Lanciano Lanciano (; ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Chieti, part of the Abruzzo region of central Italy. It has 33,944 inhabitants as of 2023. The town is known for the first recorded Catholic Church, Catholic Miracle of Lanciano, Eucharis ...

as a free agent. In his first season, he only made 14 league appearances, but in 2010–11 season, he started a successive five league games for the team, as one of the strikers in a 4-3-3 formation, along with

Luís Gabriel Sacilotto Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

to partner with Umberto Improta or

Francesco Di Gennaro Francesco Di Gennaro (born 5 December 1982) is an Italian footballer who plays as a forward for Metapontino. Career Early life Born in Naples, Campania, Di Gennaro started his senior career at Serie D (Italian fifth division until 2014) club T ...

Late career

In January 2014, Zeytulayev was signed by

Torino Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

. However, the signing was aimed solely at exploiting the mechanism of the non-EU signing of the league. On 4 February 2014 Zeytulayev joined Croatian club

HNK Gorica Hrvatski nogometni klub Gorica (), commonly referred to as HNK Gorica, is a Croatian football club based in the town of Velika Gorica, located just south of the Croatian capital Zagreb. They play their home matches at the Gradski stadion Velik ...

in a temporary deal. In the same window Torino signed

Marko Vešović Marko Vešović (Serbian Cyrillic: Марко Вешовић; born 28 August 1991) is a Montenegrin professional footballer who most recently played as a right wing-back for Qarabağ and currently plays for Montenegro national team. Club car ...

from Serbia. In 2015 he moved back to Italy, joining

Eccellenza The Eccellenza (, "excellence") is the fifth level (since 2014–15) of Italian football.Official ...

amateurs Cupello, also becoming a youth coach for the team.

International career

Zeytulayev has been capped for Uzbekistan U20 team in the

2003 FIFA World Youth Championship The 2003 FIFA World Youth Championship was the 14th FIFA World Youth Championship. It took place in United Arab Emirates between 27 November and 19 December 2003. Brazil claimed their fourth title, becoming the first country to simultaneously ho ...

. He also played for the

Uzbekistan national football team The Uzbekistan national football team ( / ) represents Uzbekistan in men's international Association football, football and is controlled by the Uzbekistan Football Association, the governing body for football in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan holds t ...

in the

2002 FIFA World Cup qualification The 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification competition was a series of tournaments organised by the six FIFA confederations. Each confederation — the AFC (Asia), CAF (Africa), CONCACAF (North, Central America and Caribbean), CONMEBOL (South Americ ...

2004 AFC Asian Cup The 2004 AFC Asian Cup was the 13th edition of the men's AFC Asian Cup, a quadrennial international association football, football tournament organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It was held from 17 July to 7 August 2004 in China. ...

and

2007 AFC Asian Cup qualification The 2007 AFC Asian Cup qualification was held in late 2005 and the final qualification round was held from February to November 2006 with 25 nations participating. For the first time, the defending champions (Japan), did not earn an automatic ...

. He was named in the squad for friendlies before

2007 AFC Asian Cup The 2007 AFC Asian Cup was the 14th edition of the men's AFC Asian Cup, a quadrennial international football tournament organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The finals were held from 7 to 29 July 2007. For the first time in its h ...

in March 2007. In March 2009, he was recalled to national team for the

2010 FIFA World Cup qualification Qualifying for the 2010 FIFA World Cup was a series of tournaments organised by the six FIFA confederations. Each confederation – the AFC (Asia), CAF (Africa), CONCACAF (North, Central America and Caribbean), CONMEBOL (South America), OFC (Oc ...

in March 2009 but did not play.

Coaching career

After retiring as a player, Zeytulayev settled down in

Abruzzo Abruzzo (, ; ; , ''Abbrìzze'' or ''Abbrèzze'' ; ), historically also known as Abruzzi, is a Regions of Italy, region of Southern Italy with an area of 10,763 square km (4,156 sq mi) and a population of 1.3 million. It is divided into four ...

, the region of origin of his Italian wife, and kept working as a youth coach for Virtus Vasto. In August 2021 he was unveiled as the new head coach of

Promozione The Promozione (, "promotion") is the sixth level in the Italian football league system. Each individual league winner within the Promozione level progresses to their closest regional league in the Eccellenza level. Depending on each league's ...

Abruzzo amateurs San Salvo. In June 2023, he left San Salvo for

Eccellenza The Eccellenza (, "excellence") is the fifth level (since 2014–15) of Italian football.Official ...

Abruzzo club Virtus Cupello. He departed in April 2024 to accept the head coaching position at

club

Career statistics

International statistics

References

External links

Virtus Lanciano prifile

Profile at La Gazzetta dello Sport (2006-07)

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Zeytulayev, Ilyos Uzbekistani men's footballers 21st-century Uzbekistani sportsmen Uzbekistani expatriate men's footballers Uzbekistan men's international footballers 2004 AFC Asian Cup players Serie A players Serie B players Serie C players Expatriate men's footballers in Italy FC Sportakademklub Moscow players Juventus FC players AS Reggina 1914 players FC Crotone players Genoa CFC players LR Vicenza players Hellas Verona FC players Delfino Pescara 1936 players SS Virtus Lanciano 1924 players HNK Gorica players Expatriate men's footballers in Russia Uzbekistani expatriate sportspeople in Italy Uzbekistani expatriate sportspeople in Russia Men's association football midfielders Sportspeople from Tashkent Region 1982 births Living people FC Bunyodkor managers