David Stepanyan, Yerevan. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
At the end of last year, the Football Federation of Armenia announced the upcoming friendly match against Russia that will take place in Krasnodar. Today, however, with the match less than a week away, not only the Armenian squad for the match against the Russian players (who were already stated by Fabio Capello) is unknown, but also the name of the head coach of the Armenian team. The lack of coach is due to Vardan Minasyan's refusal to prolong his contract, which expired on October 31 for the UEFA EURO 2016 qualification period. The 40-year-old coach prefers a different course for his career, waiting for proposals from abroad.
Nevertheless, the Football Federation of Armenia (FFA) has declared its readiness to play a friendly match not only with Russia: on June 6 the Armenian players are to play another friendly match against Germany. The FFA President, the infamous Armenian oligarch, Republican Ruben Hayrapetyan, at the final press conference in 2013 attacked the journalist who asked about the upcoming friendly matches, stating that "it is silly to talk about friendly matches when there is no one to steer the team."
The matches have been announced, but there is no coach. In any case, there is no information about his identity. Repeated attempts by our reporters to contact the FFA in order to find out whether the team has found a coach have failed. The FFA press secretary's number "does not exist", Hayrapetyan's private number does not respond, and the Media section on the FFA site is empty.
Since the beginning of 2014 the Armenian media, which had been flooded with names of the most improbable candidates to be the coach of the Armenian team, are now keeping silence unanimously. Following Minasyan's resignation, the media suggested the names of various candidates, mostly from South America, the last one was the name of the Uruguayan Gregorio Perez.
Following the results of the toss of the qualifying tournament for the European Championship 2016, which first was attended by 24 teams of the continent, Armenia was represented by the FFA Executive Director Armen Minasyan. Group I, where the Armenian team ended up, looks impressive. Apart from Armenia, the group includes Portugal, Serbia, Albania and Denmark. The host country of EURO 2016 - France - will only participate in the qualifying tournament at the level of friendly matches.
Note that in the four years of Minasyan's coaching, the national team of Armenia achieved a breakthrough, rising from 99th to 30th position in the FIFA rankings. Therefore, despite the serious competitors, the Armenian team has a chance to go to France in 2016. And today, the team led by Henrik Mkhitaryan, Yura Movsisyan, Araz Ozbilis and Roman Berezovsky especially needs a competent coach who could solve this serious problem.
The oligarch Hayrapetyan previously publicly stated that the Federation has no intention of spending too much on inviting a top coach, preferring to use the "millions of dollars to build football schools." According to the agency Pluri Consultoria, the "cost" of the 30 highest paid football coaches in the world ranges from 2.35 to 17 million dollars. Against this background, the reluctance of the FFA president to "spend" is most likely due to the lack of this money in the FFA treasury. Therefore Hayrapetyan and the FFA Executive Committee crave the return of Vardan Minasyan. The latter has repeatedly refused to lead the team, waiting for invitations from foreign clubs. Given that over the past five months Minasyan never left Armenia, it is still likely that his name will be the one to be announced at the last moment as the Armenian team coach.
