Armenia’s junior national football team has players from Olympic and Seville

Armenia’s junior national football team started to get prepared for the group tournaments of the European Championship early this year. Chief Coach of the team Roman Simonyan gave an interview to News.am-Sport.

Asked whether only local players participated in the trainings or there were foreign ones as well, chief coach said that all those who could have been included in the team passed the training. The team has three new comers: goal keeper Anatoly Aivazov (Lokomotiv), David Malkhasyan (Olympic) and Furman Melkonyan (Sevilla).

As for the question that the choice for the players has been increased, Simonyan said that they have been paying attention to Armenian players abroad as well for already two years.

In response to the question that the team will participate in the Cup of Kazakh President on Apr. 27 - May 3 and what it will give to the team, the coach said that international matches are very important for the teams in general. It will be the first match for the Armenian team. Besides, experience, professionalism and spirit are those factors which are gained just during international matches.  

Asked whether there will be other international tournaments, the coach said they may participate in some friendly matches prior to the European Championships. Besides, local control matches are also possible, however, strong and weak points are observed only in international games and the more the team plays, the more those features will be evident.

In response to the fact that the team will play with Serbian, Belarusian and Moldavian teams in the first qualifying group, the coach said that there are no weak teams. However, he would like to separate Serbian team as a strong one.

Asked that the current team exists from last year as the coach trained the players when they were under 16, Simonyan said that it is the first case that the team was gathered earlier. In general, it includes players mainly from Pyunik and Banants, as well as from Mika and Shengavit teams. In the meantime, players from other clubs and abroad are not ruled out to be invited.

Interview by Khachik Chakhoyan

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