POINTS FOR EFFORT: FOOTBALL OFFICIALS PRAISE ARMENIA’S SOCCER DEVELOPMENT
- The top executives of international and European football’s governing bodies praised the recent progress in Armenian football as they paid a two-day visit to Yerevan early this week. Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, the presidents of FIFA and UEFA, visiting on the invitation of Armenian Football Federation chief Ruben Hayrapetyan, met with the country’s president and prime minister on Tuesday to discuss the current international projects aimed at developing football in Armenia.
After the meeting, both officials confirmed “the readiness of Armenia’s political authorities to support the development of football in the country.”
The presidential press office, in particular, quoted Robert Kocharyan as hailing the FIFA-sponsored programs in Armenia, which, he said, “already yield results.”
The main purpose of Blatter’s and Platini’s visit to Armenia was to attend a ceremony of laying the foundation stone for a construction in the capital’s south-eastern district that will house a sport boarding school for youths and a national teams technical center. They also visited the children’s and youth football school of soccer club Banants that was repaired under FIFA’s Goal 1 program and currently has 750 charges.
“What has been done is good. We are here to develop your children’s football and we want young Armenians to have an opportunity to play football by helping to develop the country’s football infrastructure,” Platini said.
Blatter expressed a hope that the new center would train a future generation of footballers “capable of winning world cups.”
“Perhaps in ten years’ time you will become the world champions,” Blatter said addressing scores of boys from the FC Pyunik football school. “But there is still a long way to go.”
The FIFA president also congratulated the national team of Armenia for showing “excellent results” in their recent Euro-2008 qualifiers against Poland, Portugal and Serbia. He said Armenians had created “an atmosphere of fear” for those teams.
“I watched some episodes from the games and especially in the last match Armenians had much more opportunities to score against the Serbs,” Blatter said at a press conference later that day.
Both officials answered media questions concerning UEFA’s decision to cancel Armenia v Azerbaijan matches over security concerns.
Platini admitted that UEFA made a mistake when it allowed the two nations to be drawn together in one qualifying group. “It could have been easier to place them in different groups,” he said. “But when it was too late to change anything, the UEFA executive committee turned to regional experts whose instruction was to cancel the matches. And the executive committee followed that instruction.”
The UEFA president found it fair that both teams were awarded zero points for the matches they did not play.
“No matches, no points,” he explained. “The situation was not easy, indeed. The safety of individual players was at stake.”
Both officials pledged that no such problems will emerge in the future either on the level of national teams or clubs. They said the draw for the World Cup 2010 qualification stage due next month will be held so as to ensure Armenia and Azerbaijan are not drawn in the same group.
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