The passions surrounding the resignation of the president of the Football Federation of Armenia continue to flare up, even the football clubs have become divided and turned into camps, and these colors have intensified especially in the political context.
It all started in 2024. after the defeat of the Armenian national team with a score of 0:2 during the Armenia-North Macedonia football match held in Yerevan on October 13 in the fourth round of the UEFA Nations League.
Immediately after the match, the movement of "First Front of Armenia" (FAF) football fans, together with hundreds of other football fans, went to the FFA office to demand a meeting with the president of the federation, Armen Melikbekyan.
The president of the FFA did not accept them, and this is where Melikbekyan's resignation campaign began. started by FAF members to fight against the "deplorable state of football" in their words. In particular, the founder of the FAF movement, Sergey Janjoyan, noted: "We supported Armen Melikbekyan at the time, but now we have reached the point that the FFA president should resign."
Sports commentators and journalists gave more impetus to the campaign, voicing a barrage of opinions on social networks against the activities of the FFA management, demanding resignations and harsh critical speeches, and here the leading football clubs gave the last chord.
Today, not only the football-loving community, but also the major Armenian football clubs "Shirak", "Pyunik" and "Urartu" are actively demanding the resignation of Melikbekyan, who was re-elected a year ago. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in Armenian football.
The president of "Shirak" club Arman Sahakyan linked the continuous failures of Armenian football to the deep problems of the system, the lack of cooperation between the federation and the teams, the demotivation of young football players, the indescribable shortage of Armenian football players in Armenian football (he notes that only 7-8 thousand young people play football in Armenia, and in general, the majority of the national team does not have an Armenian football education) and other symbolic factors.
According to Sahakyan, "the mechanism does not work" in Armenian football, because the defeats suffered by youth teams with embarrassing scores already demotivate young people to continue their football career, which leads to a shortage of qualified personnel, and sometimes even to their absence. One of the most influential is the "Pyunik" football club. which is one of the first to voice the demand for the resignation of the FFA president from 2022, made much more impressive revelations, even publicized some episodes of internal pressures by making a statement about the crime.
The owner of the Pyunik club, Artur Soghomoyan, opened parentheses in his scandalous interview, the motive of which was the biased attitude of the FFA president Melikbekyan towards "Pyunik", after which Artur Soghomoyan announced that he was forced to sell his competitive club due to internal intrigues.
Let's emphasize, Melikbekyan didn't even consider it necessary to respond to this noisy speech, maybe he didn't have a counter-argument. instead, FFA vice-president Armen Nikoghosyan, who for many years was the journalist of the daily newspaper "Haykakan Zhamanak" owned by Pashinyan's family, insulted "Pyunik" on the air of "FastSport".
"This once again proves that Armen Nikoghosyan has become so low and discouraged that he resorts to cheap manipulations and lies in order to restore the discredited reputation of the FFA leadership and humiliate others. We consider unacceptable the behavior of the FFA representative, which, first of all, tarnishes the image of the entire Armenian football. We call on the FFA vice-president to focus on his immediate duties, the unscrupulous performance of which has already led to an unprecedented catastrophic situation in Armenian football.
We reaffirm our solidarity with all fan movements of Armenian football and demand the immediate resignation of the current leadership of the Football Federation of Armenia," the president of "Pyunik" FC said in response.
The disastrous state of football forced the football commentators to be honest for the first time. Journalist Robert Gasparianio, for example, was not satisfied with dismissing the head coach, he said that Alexander Petrakov should have been dismissed last year for his unsatisfactory results, but the football environment has become extremely unhealthy and unproductive.
"18 matches, only 4 wins, one of them friendly, and 0 dry matches. These are simply telling numbers, and it seems to me that Alexander Petrakov had exhausted himself in the Armenian national team a long time ago. It is necessary to look at the problem deeply, that is, to look at the results of our youth teams under 16, 17, 19 and 21 years old, it is simply terrifying. defeats after defeats: 0:6, 0:8, 0:9 - this is the new generation of the Armenian national team. Complaining from the Football Federation of Armenia headed by Ruben Hayrapetyan, the new forces were supposed to come and completely change Armenian football, but this did not happen at all. The results were as bad as they were."
And Eduard Kalantaryan, who has already managed to talk about Armen Melikbekyan's short and easy way to serve the Turkish interests and from being a commentator to becoming the president of the FFA, referring to the topic, noted that Armenia does not lack young talents, but there is a problem of adequate quantity and quality of coaches, and these and all these systemic problems must be solved from above.
In order to mitigate the wave of protests against him, FFA President Melikbeklian allegedly found himself resourceful and blamed the Armenian national football team's series of defeats exclusively on the head coach of the Armenian national team, Ukrainian Alexander Petrakov, and removed him from the position of head coach, and in response to calls for his resignation, he made it clear that he would not even discuss it. It is not on the agenda.
"At this moment, as tempting as it may seem to resign and get rid of this heavy burden, I am more concerned about the tasks of the upcoming important year, the willingness to finish unfinished business and the desire to form plans and goals for the future as a result of discussion. The leadership of the FFA, in turn, is ready for any discussions in order to raise the problems and find their solutions," said Armen Melikbekyan.
Sharp criticism began to follow this statement again. However, what is the reason for this permissiveness in Armenian football?
Thus, almost a year ago, in the days preceding the elections of the FFA president, Melikbekyan published a video lasting about 20 minutes in the framework of his "pre-election campaign", in which he presented his activities in the FFA in a completely different way since his appointment, flooded with false and manipulative data. .
For example, the clip talks about the "unprecedented" development of infrastructures without clarifying what will happen in 2019-2023. How much of the more than 30 billion drams received by the FFA has been directed to the development of really important infrastructures for Armenian football?
Has monitoring been done on the technical condition of the small fields built with FFA funds in Yerevan and in the marzes, how often they are actually used and to what extent they serve the purpose?
The author of the report smoothly manages to bypass and hide the shameful competitions and recorded indicators of teams of different age groups with encouraging expressions.
In his pre-election clip, Melikbekyan did not explain why the Armenian youth team suffered 22 defeats in the last 24 games, won only one, and ended one game with a draw.
He did not give an explanation as to why the U17 team lost all the games, the U19 team also lost all the games of the last qualifying group, including the Faroe Islands team. With the availability and continuity of these data, not only the quality of Armenian football is put at risk. characteristic, but also the competence of football players recruited for the national team.
Let's remind that the main competition in the elections of the FFA president was between Melikbekyan and Aras Ozbilis, a former football player of the Armenian national team.
Expectedly, Armen Melikbekyan, a former sports journalist from Ijevan and former opposition journalist during Pashinyan's rule, whose pro-Azerbaijani positions (e.g. "The army is the terror of the nation: no to the law of 1000 drams", "How Sumgait" and "Khojalu" were invented) "" and other articles) for continuously expressing and carrying out anti-Armenian propaganda on his own Epress.am website, he received the full support and patronage of the Prime Minister of Armenia, he was not fired and as a result, a divided football community, broken relations and fruitless football politics and uncertain continuation were created, this is the state of Armenian football today.
Let's also remind that in the text of his fateful speech "Artsakh is Armenia and that's the end" in Artsakh Square, he also coded the future of Armenian football, saying that the national football team should become the first prize winner of the world or Europe by 2050. And here is Armen Melikbekyan, who grew up with Pashinyan in Ijevan. paves the "glorious-shameful" path of Armenian football with crushing and shameful defeats.
In fact, the majority of the football society and major football clubs have been unanimously and continuously calling for the resignation of the FFA leadership, which can provide new opportunities and perspectives for active systemic changes in Armenian football, cooperation between structures, training of personnel and provision of real Armenian football education and culture. request.
