Armen Melikbekyan. There are people for whom it’s a dream to sit in Armenia football federation president’s chair (PHOTOS)

By Lusine Shahbazyan

There are people for whom it is a dream to sit in the chair of the President of the Football Federation of Armenia (FFA), FFA President Armen Melikbekyan said at a press conference Wednesday.

Melikbekyan responded to reporters' questions and, also, presented in detail the activities of the FFA over the past five years.

"A clearly planned campaign is underway against the Football Federation of Armenia. The accusations that are made against us, the criticisms, the accusations of corruption, are clearly false, never substantiated.

There was a period during the federation's activities when the national team won the C division of the Nations League, and at that time the federation was ignored; we are not against it. But when the team has setbacks, only the federation is to blame.

The defeats suffered [recently] by a large score from Georgia were very heavy for all of us. There were many reasons for playing poorly with the Georgian national team, I don't want to dwell on them all the time. We can say that the leaders of the team did not play, the new coach did not have time, some of the team's players did not satisfy with their game.

We realize that these were very heavy defeats. Before that, we had not had defeats with such scores for two years. There is a group that constantly wants to see these defeats in order to constantly speak out, criticize, and blame the federation.

Everyone is responsible for these defeats: the federation, the team, the coaches, the players.

There are two reasons that we are currently discussing and studying. We have had meetings with the coaches and players. The new coach has given some solutions, but it is clear that we need to give him time.

We have an important goal this year: we have submitted a joint bid with Georgia to host the World Youth Cup.
I realize that there are many people who would like this project to fail. The decision to accept the bid for the World Cup will be made this year. We hope that we will manage to win the World Cup [bid] with Georgia.

I can never promise that the Armenian national team will win a spot to the World or European Cups.

I will not resign [as the FFA president]. I made a statement about resignation, and said that I will not resign and why. I gave all the explanations in the statement. We have talked about this a lot, whoever wants to see or hear, sees and hears. Resignation is an institutional matter. It is possible to see only the bad and not see the good. I spoke for quite a long time and already presented our activities,” said Armen Melikbekyan.

Melikbekyan has held the position of FFA President since 2019.

Photos by Emma Asatryan