The next summer newcomer of Dynamo was the best scorer in the history of the national team of Kazakhstan Bakhtiyor Zaynutdinov, who is well known to Valery Karpin from working together in Rostov. Read about how the career of the 27-year-old player developed in our article.
Bakhtiyor was born in the south of Kazakhstan in the city of Taraz, the first mention of which dates back to the 5th century. The father of the future national team player, being a big football fan, instilled this love in his three sons from childhood and strongly supported their desire to play sports. As a result, all three successfully passed through the school of their native Taraz. The elder brother Bobyr acted as a goalkeeper, the younger Bahrom was a defender, and Bateka (as his family call Bakhtiyor) was versatile from childhood and followed the Brazilian national team, especially Ronaldo and Kaka.
Zaynutdinov always stood out from his peers with talent and a bright head, played for the junior national teams of the country and in 2015 went to St. Petersburg for the Granatkin Memorial. There he was seriously injured, tearing the crucial ligament, and the family had to look for money for the operation among acquaintances and friends. It's good that the players of Taraz helped.
The young body successfully coped with a long recovery, and at the age of 19, Zainutdinov made his debut at the highest level as part of his native Taraz. At the end of the 2017 season, he received individual awards "The best young player of the Premier League" and "Opening of the season", scoring 7 goals and 3 assists in 27 championship matches.
It is not surprising that Bakhtiyor started the next season as a player of the national champion Astana. He watched the victory of his new team in the Kazakhstan Super Cup from the bench, but in the first match in the starting lineup he scored a hat-trick against Irtysh, playing as an attacking midfielder. The super-saturated 2018 included the gold medal, the first steps in European competitions and a goal against Rennes in the group stage of the Europa League, as well as his debut in the main national team, where he scored three times during the year.
The next step in his career was moving to Russia, where he joined Valery Karpin's Rostov. To do this, Zaynutdinov had to buy out his contract from Astana and refuse to increase his salary by 2.5 times. And he did not lose, becoming an important element of the Rostov system: in a year and a half he played 35 matches, scored 4 goals and gave 2 assists, and also played with Sergey Parshivlyuk, Maxim Osipenko and Danil Glebov. According to Bakhtiyor, this time became a real school of life for him, and he learned a lot from Karpin.
— Zaynutdinov was a very important player. If it wasn't for this buyout option, we wouldn't have sold him. There was no chance for us to stop it. We wouldn't have sold him if we hadn't been offered sky-high money. We were probably ready to give money ourselves, so long as they didn't take Zaynutdinov away," Valery Georgievich said after his departure.
The buyout option was used by CSKA, where Bakhtiyor's universalism was eagerly used by all three coaches with whom he managed to work. For three years in the army team, he played in all positions in defense and midfield. And he was good everywhere, becoming the silver medalist of the Russian championship and the Cup winner in the 2022/2023 season.
— It's not difficult for me, because football is very dynamic now, you need to be ready to play everywhere. Previously, a player could play in one position all his life, but in modern football you need to be able to be useful in many areas of the field. I definitely don't feel dizzy from such permutations," Bakhtiyor said in an interview with Metaratings.
In August 2023, Zaynutdinov decided to try himself in Europe and moved to the Turkish Besiktas for 4.5 million euros, becoming the most expensive Kazakhstani football player in history. His debut turned out to be perfect: on August 24, in the Conference League qualification match against Dynamo Kyiv, he scored a winning goal.
Two months later, another significant event took place in his career: in the Euro 2024 qualification match against Finland, Bakhtiyor made a brace, scoring the 14th goal for the national team of Kazakhstan, and became the best scorer in its history. By the way, before that, the long-term record belonged to Ruslan Baltiev, who played for Dynamo in the first half of the 2000s.
But he was not destined to lead the national team to the European Championship. In the November match of the Turkish championship, Bakhtiyor suffered fractures of the nasal bone and the base of the eye socket, missing the decisive game against Slovenia, which ended in the defeat of Kazakhstan.
At the same time, Senol Gunes left Besiktas, after which real permutations began – in 14 months the team changed 4 head coaches, and Serdar Topraktepe managed to be acting manager three times. Nevertheless, in his first season, Zaynutdinov won the Turkish Cup and played a total of 37 matches.
The second one turned out to be crumpled due to injuries and the limit on foreign players, because of which he entered the field only 12 times. According to Turkish media, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did not count on Zaynutdinov, so returning to Russia to a coach who knows all his strengths perfectly well was a logical step.
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