“Kitchee” Football Club, which features Turkmen midfielder Ruslan Mingazov, won the Hong Kong Premier League for the 2025/26 season. “Kitchee” finished the season with 52 points, nine ahead of closest rivals “Tai Po”.

Mingazov spent the season as one of the team's leaders, scoring four goals and providing eight assists in the league. This season, he also captained “Kitchee” for the first time, in a 3-0 victory against “Southern District” on Matchday 14. "It's my first time leading the team out with the armband; it's a great honor and responsibility for me," he commented at the time. In the final match of the season, against “Eastern”, which ended 4-4, the Turkmen midfielder scored twice.

This spring, Mingazov ranked among “Kitchee's” top three players in three key physical metrics: maximum speed, high-speed distance, and total distance covered per game. The 34-year-old winger reached speeds of 32,9 km/h, covered nearly 900 meters at high speed, and averaged approximately 11,5 km per game, becoming the team's only player to rank among the top three in all three metrics.

Mingazov is 34 years old. He has been playing for “Kitchee” since 2022. He won his first Hong Kong championship title in the 2022/23 season, when the club completed the treble, winning the league, Hong Kong Cup, and Senior Shield. The midfielder scored 17 goals in 18 matches and was named Hong Kong Footballer of the Year. This title was Mingazov's fifth in four different countries – he previously won the championship in Turkmenistan (2008, FC “Ashgabat”), Latvia (2010, “Skonto”), and the Czech Republic (2016/17, “Slavia” Prague).

This was “Kitchee's” seventh title in the Hong Kong Premier League and the thirteenth in the club's history. Next season, the team will return to the AFC Champions League 2.