Underdog Stories / Football history

Why Did Qarabağ FK Leave Agdam? History of the Refugee Club

The history of Qarabağ FK, the refugee club from Agdam: why a club left its town in 1993, won a double in exile and is now planning a way back.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · September 14, 2026

Share on X

On May 12, 1993, Qarabağ played a cup semifinal at Imarat Stadium in Agdam and won 1-0. The crowd applauded and the players walked off. Nobody in the stands knew they had just watched the club's last home game for more than three decades.

Qarabağ left Agdam because the town fell. On 23 July 1993, during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, Armenian forces seized Agdam, and the team was forced to move from Imarat Stadium to Baku. Most residents had already fled. That is the short version of the history of Qarabağ FK, the refugee club from Agdam. The longer version is odder, sadder and, in places, more uncomfortable than the one most people tell. Chris Horwedel lays it out in the Why We Love This Club episode "Qarabağ FK: The Club That Carried a City Away From Home."

How did Qarabağ FK start in Agdam?

Slowly, and with very little money. The club was founded in 1951 as Məhsul, after the Agdam city stadium was built. Chris translates the name as "to harvest" or "produce." It is not a name for a team with big plans. Agdam was a long way from any capital, and so was its football club.

The name kept changing. From 1982 to 1987 the squad played as "Kooperator." In 1987 it became Qarabağ, and a year later it did something that should have started a golden age. It became Azerbaijan champion for the first time in 1988 and earned a place in the Soviet Second League.

Then the Soviet Union broke apart. Azerbaijan became independent, and the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh turned into a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Agdam lay outside the old autonomous enclave but close to the fighting. Chris says it became a hub for Azerbaijani civilians driven from nearby land, and then a target itself.

What happened to Agdam in 1993?

The war reached the club before it reached the town. Allahverdi Bagirov had played for Qarabağ and coached its young players. When the war came, Chris says, he became a military commander. Accounts credit him with helping to free or move civilians and captives around Khojaly. He died in the war. The episode says an anti-tank mine killed him in June 1992 and that he was later named a national hero of Azerbaijan.

Chris doesn't try to make this tidy, and he's right not to. A teammate became a combatant. A coach became a commander. A town built around ordinary routines became a front line.

Then came May 12, and the semifinal. The players, Chris says, believed they would win the cup and bring it home to Agdam. Two months later the town was gone. Imarat Stadium was destroyed in the fighting. Sources disagree on the exact month the bombardment hit the ground, but they agree on the result. Chris puts the wider war at about 30,000 dead and more than a million people uprooted.

Why is Qarabağ FK called the refugee club of Agdam?

Because the label is literal. The club is sometimes called "Qaçqın Klub," the Refugee Club. Chris says the team moved between borrowed grounds, mostly in Baku, while money ran low. Players and fans had lost homes or relatives.

The oddest part is the sport. Qarabağ won the league and the cup in 1993. The cup final in Baku finished 1-0 after extra time. It was the first league title for a club from outside Baku. Chris calls the double both an honor and a form of mourning. The best team the club had ever had won everything while losing the place the trophies were meant for.

At times the team played in Güzanlı, in the part of Agdam district still under Azerbaijani control. That put them closer to home. It didn't give them a home. There was no steady gate, no modern base and no big local economy behind them.

The name still travelled. In 1999 Qarabağ became the first Azerbaijani club to win a European match away from home, beating Maccabi Haifa. That was a landmark. It was not yet a plan.

How did Qarabağ become the biggest club in Azerbaijan?

“Many clubs move because a new arena offers more money. Qarabağ moved because their town became unreachable.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

Two things happened. First, a sponsor. In 2001 Azersun took on the sponsorship, which resolved the club's financial problems. Chris notes that Azersun briefly joined the club's name, then dropped out of it, while staying on as owner and main funder. Money bought training grounds, wages and room to plan.

Second, a coach. Gurban Gurbanov took charge in 2008. He had been a prolific striker and is still the national team's top scorer, Chris says. His idea was continuity: patient work with the ball, quick movement, wide attacks. Fans started calling the team the "Barcelona of the Caucasus." Chris admits the budget comparison is closer to a bicycle next to an aircraft carrier. The point, he says, is that Qarabağ wanted an identity. A deep defensive line was the smaller part of it.

The results followed. In 2014 the club won the league for the first time in 21 years. That same season it reached the Europa League group stage, and Chris says an away win at Dnipro was the first group-stage win by an Azerbaijani club in a major UEFA competition. In the last group game a late goal that would have sent them through was ruled out, and the replays made the call look wrong.

In 2017 Qarabağ beat Copenhagen on away goals and became the first Azerbaijani team to reach the Champions League group stage. Both of their points came from draws against Atlético Madrid. The table barely moved. What an Azerbaijani club could imagine did.

Then came 2024. Chris says Qarabağ beat Braga 6-5 over two legs and met Bayer Leverkusen in the Europa League round of 16. They led in both games. In the return they were 2-0 up with ten men, and Leverkusen scored in the 72nd minute and twice in added time. Qarabağ went out 5-4 on aggregate. Gurbanov arrived the same summer that Guardiola and Klopp began major jobs, Chris points out, and only one of the three is still in the same chair.

The next step came this year. Qarabağ made their Champions League knockout debut as the first club from Azerbaijan to reach that stage. They got there by finishing 22nd in the league phase on ten points, which set up a play-off with Newcastle. It was the 12th successive season in a UEFA group stage or league phase.

Is the Qarabağ refugee-club story as simple as it sounds?

No. Chris says so himself, which is the best part of the episode. Qarabağ is often told as a clean story of survival. He argues the truth is harder, because the club's identity is tied to a conflict that brought grief and exile to Armenians as well as Azerbaijanis.

The later chapters show it. In 2020 renewed war returned the Agdam district to Azerbaijani control. In 2023, after another Azerbaijani offensive, nearly all of Nagorno-Karabakh's ethnic Armenian population fled to Armenia. Chris puts it plainly: "Football can carry memory, but it can also harden memory into triumphalism."

The club has been on the wrong side of that line. UEFA listed 13 players and 14 officials who gave a military salute at a Europa League qualifier in October 2020. UEFA called the gesture inappropriate given the political context. Later that year, the club's PR and media manager posted a message calling for the killing of Armenians, and the Armenian federation asked for sanctions. Chris says the official was banned from football for life and the club was fined. UEFA also barred club and national team matches in its competitions from taking place in either Armenia or Azerbaijan.

Chris's view is that a club born from displacement should know better than most what dehumanizing language does. I agree. Homecoming goes sour fast when it means pretending only one people suffered.

Will Qarabağ ever play in Agdam again?

Maybe. The ground exists on paper. On September 19, 2024, President Ilham Aliyev laid the foundation stone for a new Imarat Stadium in Agdam. It is designed to meet UEFA's category 4 requirements, with 11,700 seats and a natural grass pitch.

A stone is not a stadium, though. StadiumDB reports that building work didn't start until a contractor was picked in early 2026, and that the ground is expected by the end of 2028. It also says nobody yet knows whether Qarabağ will move back once it opens.

For now, the club plays in Baku at Azersun Arena and Tofiq Bahramov Republican Stadium. Chris says Azersun is the close, intimate one. Tofiq Bahramov is where black-and-white flags fill a wide bowl on European nights. It has its own footnote. Bahramov was the Azerbaijani official who helped award England's disputed third goal in the 1966 World Cup final, and the world remembered him as the "Russian linesman." Chris's line: football misplaced an Azerbaijani before Qarabağ ever did.

The fan group İmarət Tayfa keeps the old ground's name on banners and in songs. Chris says a new stadium will only matter when a real community forms around it. That means homes, schools, shops and safe roads first. The first whistle won't undo exile, he says. It would only give people a reason to gather again.

Until then, the applause from May 12, 1993 is still going. It's just doing it in Baku.