Mkhitaryan will be perfect replacement for Götze – Bundesliga.com

Borussia Dortmund needed a technically gifted, goalscoring midfielder to replace the departed Mario Götze in the 2013/14 summer transfer window and they seem to have found the ideal candidate in Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Bundesliga.com reports.

“Although born in the Armenian capital of Yerevan on 21 January 1989, Mkhitaryan spent his childhood years in southeastern France. His father, Hamlet, a respected professional player in his homeland, who would go on to become an Armenian international, accepted an offer to move to France and play for the now defunct ASOA Valence just months after Henrikh’s birth. Tragically, Hamlet died of a brain tumor at the age of just 33, after which the Mkhitaryans left France to move back to Yerevan in 1995.

“Mkhitaryan joined Yerevan’s biggest club FC Pyunik in 1995, developing into one of the country's most talented players. After three seasons in Pyunik’s senior team, he left Armenia for Ukrainian Premier League side FC Metalurh Donetsk in 2009. Following a staggering first season in which he scored 14 goals and became the club’s youngest-ever captain, he moved across the city to Shakhtar. With the Pitmen he simply got better, helping them win three successive domestic doubles and becoming the division's top scorer in 2012/13 with 25 goals.

“The [Borussia] fans should therefore have no qualms about learning to hum along to the famous Sabre Dance by the Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian, the song that was played whenever he scored for Shakhtar.

“He was voted his country's Footballer of the Year in 2009, 2011 and 2012, as well as the CIS (Baltic and Commonwealth of Independent States) Footballer of the Year in 2012. Lived abroad as a child has given Mkhitaryan a talent for learning languages. As well as his mother tongue Armenian, he speaks French, Russian, English and Portuguese,” Bundesliga.com writes.

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