Estonia-Armenia: contexts and results

Estonia-Armenia 1:0 (0:0)

Estonia Team

• Sergei Pareiko
• Enver Jaager
• Taavi Rahn
• Rajo Piiroja
• Ragnar Klavan
• Sander Puri
• Konstantin Vassilijev
• Aleksandr Dmitrijev
• Tarmo Kink (Joel Lindpere, 69)
• Vladimir Voskoboinikov (Martin Vunk, 86)
• Kristen Viikmae (Sergei Zeinov, 63)

Armenia Team

• Gevorg Kasparov
• Sargis Hovsepyan
• Aghvan Mkrtchyan
• Vahagn Minasyan
• Robert Arzumanyan
• Ararat Arakelyan
• Artur Edigaryan
• Levon Pachayan
• Artavadz Karamyan (Gevorg Kazaryan, 90)
• Edgar Manucharyan (Arman Karamyan, 87)
• Henrik Mkhitaryan

Kick-off: Sander Puri 84 (1:0)
Venue: A Le Coq Arena, Tallinn
Attendance: 6000
Referee: Zimmermann, C
Booked: Aghvan Mkrtchyan (86), Sergei Pareiko (90)

Estonia-Armenia match contexts

Estonia-Armenia World Cup 2010 Qualification match, the game of Group 5 back teams, would have come to no European interest but for a curious incident. Yesterday the president of the Football Association of Estonia raised a scandal in the stadium addressing the Armenian team offensive words and fist blows as our team was training in A Le Coq Arena. It appears Pohlak thought Armenians are deliberately trying to damage the cover that had considerably suffered in the rain. Estonia’s FA president, nevertheless, apologized for the incident. Anyway, the game came to have another context. The first context of the game, actually, was quitting the back position in the list, with both games tending to reach this goal.

Game results

Armenian Team is far from being a World Cup 2010 qualifier. Only the matches vs. Estonian team were enough to prove that under the Danish manager Jan Poulsen, our team is unable to defeat a team ranking even lower. By the way, at his first press conference as Armenia’s head coach Poulsen said that he understood the enthusiasm in Armenia after the positive results in Europe Cup 2008 Qualification tour and assured he will take over the late Jan Porterfield to make the Armenian team even better to lead them to the World Cup 2010. After the first defeats Poulsen was not as optimistic as previously and claimed that it’s only the Estonian team that Armenia will be able to win over in the group. However, even this prediction remained unfulfilled and after Armenia-Estonia match, the coach was sacked. Vardan Minasyan, having assumed as the temporary head coach, could principally do little to revive the team, though, the Armenian players showed quite another game under his chairmanship.

In one of his recent conferences, Jan Poulsen went on with his predictive policy and outlined that Armenian football has a good future and the young players to be involved in the team will become even better in 3-4 years and will form a strong team. Poulsen’s evasive answer followed as Aysor correspondent asked him whether the strong as he said team would be able to qualify for the World Cup 2016 with 24 teams competing instead of 16.

His words on having a strong Armenian football team appear to be «bones» thrown to the Armenian football fans, having thirst for victories.

We should have the World Cup 2016 as our main goal and we should do our best to attain this. The next coach, whoever he be, should have an answer whether he has a certain program to lead the Armenian team in the oncoming 7 years.