In the Armenian capital Yerevan, the graffiti gets straight to the point. On a busy road near the summit of the city’s Cascade, a Soviet-era concrete stairway built into Yerevan’s natural contours that rises nearly 400 feet above the city, a simple message is stencilled on a grey wall blackened from fumes: “Save Armenian football”.
The message dates to before Armenia’s Velvet Revolution of 2018, when the Football Federation of Armenia (FFA) was ruled by its former president, the businessman and parliamentary deputy Ruben Hayrapetyan, a ruthless and unpopular figure who, critics say, held the federation in an iron grip and was personally responsible for the corruption that has been endemic to football since the country gained its independence in 1991.
Hayrapetyan was swept away with the rest of the Nomenklatura booted from power when the country’s former president, Serzh Sargsyan, was removed following massive street demonstrations four years ago. The result has been an overdue “democratisation” of football governance, and a transparency in the way the FFA does business that has brought change both to the domestic championship and to the national team.
Armenia – population less than three million – does not pretend to be a powerful football country. But there has always been potential here. Led by their first global superstar, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, the team made a brave stab at qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, thrashing Denmark 4-0 in Copenhagen.
The team is an enigma. During Euro 2020 qualifying, they were in pole position to reach the finals with three games to go before a spectacular implosion that culminated in a 9-1 defeat to Italy in Palermo. They have since conceded nine again in a friendly against Norway, yet just 12 months earlier they had beaten Iceland and Romania to lead their World Cup qualifying group just before the halfway stage.
On the eve of those qualifiers, Armenia’s vocal football supporters were granted a wish they had long called for, the appointment of an overseas coach. In came the 66-year-old Spaniard Joaquin Caparros, the archetypal journeyman boasting 22 previous appointments including at Villarreal, Athletic Bilbao and Sevilla. Armenia’s most successful period had been masterminded by a foreigner, the late Ian Porterfield, former Chelsea manager, whose memory is cherished here. Supporters were hopeful of a repeat.
“One of our demands has always been that the FFA appoint a proper, talented coach,” says Arsen Zaqaryan, a member of the First Armenian Front (FAF), a supporter activist group that formed to be the principal point of opposition to Hayrapetyan’s influence. In a climate of fear and suspicion, they were the only voices that spoke out publicly against the former president. “Our native coaches aren’t qualified for the job, but Hayrapetyan would not listen. We have wanted a foreign coach for a long, long time, but we could not be heard.
“This guy [Caparros] is a proper coach. He had a really good start, in the World Cup and in the Nations League. Then something went wrong and I don’t think he quite knew why.
“People are ready to trust him, he’s well liked, he’s very positive. Nobody is calling for him to be removed. People want him to be given another chance, because we’ve had some really good games under him. I think that could change if we have a poor Nations League and a poor European Championship campaign.”
Either way Armenian football is, for the first time in the country’s short history, deemed to be in safe hands, to the relief of the FAF and other stakeholders who had grown tired of Hayrapetyan’s interference.
It wasn’t just supporters who had run out of patience. In December 2019, police raided the former president’s mansion as part of an investigation into suspected embezzlement, falsification of documents, and misuse of powers in a commercial organisation, all in relation to his tenure as FFA chief.
They are far from the most serious charges to have been brought against him. In 2012, he was forced to give up his seat in parliament, where he represented the party of his close ally, the deposed former president Sargsyan, after security men in his employ murdered a military doctor at a restaurant owned by Hayrapetyan in Yerevan. In 2015, he avoided prosecution despite admitting to carrying out a physical attack that left a business rival in hospital.
“Hayrapetyan is a criminal,” says Zaqaryan. “He’s from the 90s, he had his methods. Maybe there were some things that were better [in football] in his time, but in general this is a big improvement.
“He would have his favourite players, so talented players who deserved it never got called up. He would always decide. That favouritism, the interference from the president, is gone now.
“The new president, Armen Melikbekyan, is a former journalist. He’s more democratic, more educated, he has good knowledge of football. He also has good relations with the First Armenian Front, which is the most important thing. We’ve had a number of meetings between him and the FAF. We have good relations now with the FFA, which is very new. That never happened under Hayrapetyan.”
