Football-uniting and dividing

Football unites, but it also certainly divides. However, it’s hard to imagine that a day will come, when there will be the clubs of one city in the South Caucasus, seriously competing with each other. An absolutely unimaginable North Yerevan or South Tbilisi derbies, as it is the case in London.

And football is getting richer thanks to a ‘healthy competition’, even if in some cases it’s accompanied by excessively deep passions. Although, for a new generation it may seem far-fetched, but there were real derbies in the Caucasus. FC ‘Dinamo” Tbilisi vs. FC ‘Ararat’ Yerevan; FC ‘Ararat’ vc. FC ‘Neftchi’ Baku. It seems that the Soviet Union found in due time a formula to solve this unsolvable task.

However, if earlier a necessity was one of the formula values, why can’t it be replaced today by a real desire? Let’s call it in this case a ‘love for football’, because we all love this English game!

A few months ago, when the Armenian and Georgian champions- FC ‘Alashkert’ and FC ‘Dinamo’ Tbilisi happened to play against each other in the second round of the EUFA Champions League qualifiers, many recalled the previous derbies.

Second round of the UEFA Champions League 2016. ‘Alashkert’ hosts ‘Dinamo Tbilisi’ in Yerevan

Due to those two matches, held as part of this strife, the representatives of the football worlds of two countries met in Georgia’s capital and in Yerevan: they talked and recalled the past successes.

Lively and half-faded memories in due course, but, for all that, one thing was obvious: football isn’t the same as before. Local clubs are weak and uncompetitive, and the fans are unwilling to go to the stadiums. Perhaps Azerbaijan is an exception in that rank. Its clubs get into the Europa League group stage from time to time.

For the majority of football clubs financial problems are the life-and-death issue. If a single sponsor or an owner is facing problems, this, first of all, affects the football clubs. That’s what  happened last year to the Armenian  FC ‘Mika’, owned by businessman Mikael Baghdasarov.

If in Armenia it seems impossible to lead FC ‘Ararat’ from the Premier League backstage for several years already, in Baku, FC ‘Neftçi‘ has found itself in same situation. Of course, some football clubs in Georgia are provided good funding, there is even a state-run program, which, regrettably, hasn’t brought the expected results so far. The European club championship qualifiers largely remain unsurmountable.

‘Alashkert’ vs.’Dinamo’ match prompted mass media to publicize Georgian champion club president Roman Pipia’s vision on the development of regional football: to set up a uniform league for Georgian, Armenian, Iranian and Azerbaijani football clubs. A solution for Armenian-Azerbaijani meetings was also suggested: to conduct them on neutral territory, either in Georgia or Iran. Of course, this proposal hasn’t been further discussed, but it could be reckoned among possible options for the improvement of club football.

The past experience and the mistakes made in the same Soviet period can be rectified today. In the recent years, a number of Georgian footballers have been playing in Armenian championship, and the key players of the Armenian squad have seen the future of their professional football careers in Iran. It turns out, that there’s already a close football communication and football experts from Armenia’s neighbor countries can continue this list.

Football ‘draws’ the borders, but it also erases them. That’s what happened in 2015, when the ‘Big Football’, in all its glory, arrived in Tbilisi. Both, ‘Barcelona’ and ‘Sevilla’ have their fans in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. However, few could believe that they would be sitting side by side in one stadium to watch the big football…

Boris Paichadze National Stadium, Tbilisi, 2015. EUFA Super Cup series