In 2011, Armenia visited Ireland for the first time to play the most important match in their history. The two countries were drawn together in Euro 2012, qualifying meeting in the opening and closing round of matches. Ireland won 1-0 in Yerevan but Armenia improved so dramatically during the campaign that a win in the return match would see them leapfrog over the Boys in Green into second place.
Armenia started brightly at Lansdowne Road only to see their hopes of securing a historic first playoff place implode after 26 minutes when goalkeeper Roman Berezovsky was incorrectly sent off for deliberately handling outside his area – replays showed the ball had actually brushed the hand of Irish striker Simon Cox.
Ireland scrambled to a 2-1 victory over their 10-man opponents, who finished third despite scoring a remarkable 22 goals, more than both Russia (17) and Ireland (15) who qualified for the Euros. When Armenia returned to Lansdowne Road in 2022, they ended the match with even fewer players having received two red cards, their nine men only losing 3-2 thanks to a last minute Robbie Brady penalty.
Armenia return to Dublin with strong grounds to believe the luck of the Irish is about to finally expire and hoping it will be third time lucky. All five previous meetings between the countries have been decided by a one goal margin and last month Ireland were hugely flattered to only lose 2-1 in Yerevan, playing so poorly that the BBC could be considered generous for adding a question mark to their headline “The Worst Result in Republic of Ireland History?”
RM Block
On reflection, one cannot be certain that it was even our worst result against Armenia as Ireland also lost 1-0 in a Nations League encounter in Yerevan in 2022, which 34 matches later remains Armenia’s most recent clean sheet. Eduard Spertsyan, who scored in both victories over Ireland, has spent his entire career with Krasnodar in Russia, captaining them to their first ever title last season and was recently linked with moves to both Southampton and Celtic.
Spertsyan’s status as the leading scorer in the Armenia squad owes much to the generosity of the Irish defence with three of his 10 goals coming against us.
In 2019, Forbes magazine reported that Armenia is the country where player salaries are most equitable with the general population with fans earning on average US$400 more than players in the Armenian Premier League, whose clubs frequently admit supporters into matches for free. This helps explain why Armenia’s best performers usually move abroad.
These include captain Tigran Barseghyan, who has just won his fourth consecutive championship with Slovan Bratislava, Lucas Zelarayan, who plays for Atletico Belgrano in the country of his birth (Argentina) and Nair Tiknizyan who recently joined Red Star Belgrade for €2 million but nearly missed the Ireland game having struggled to get a visa to travel to Dublin.
Armenia’s most promising talent remains German born Grant-Leon Ranos, who plays for Borussia Monchengladbach having previously been on the books of Bayern Munich and who scored the winning goal against Ireland last month.
Luckily for Ireland there are two outstanding active Armenian footballers who remain unavailable for their national team. In September, former captain Varazdat Haroyan chose to terminate his 15-year international career rather than continue under new manager Yeghishe Melikyan. Neither will Ireland have to worry about Armenia’s greatest ever player, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who declined a recent invitation to reverse an international retirement that began in 2022.
Mkhitaryan has been crowned Armenian Footballer of the Year 12 times and remains his countries all-time record scorer with 32 goals. To date, Mkhitaryan has won 26 major trophies and in 2017 became the first Armenian to win a major European trophy, scoring in Manchester United’s 2-0 victory over Ajax in the Europa League final. At 36, Mkhitaryan’s performance levels remain so high that in June he started the 2025 Champions League final for Inter Milan.
His extraordinary career in European club competitions began in July 2007 at the Brandywell as a substitute for Pyunik Yerevan against Derry City in a Champions League match that ended 0-0. However, Armenia’s future captain was not the most famous leader visiting the Maiden City that day, reflected in the memorable newspaper headline “Dalai Lama fails to inspire Derry as Pyunik hold firm”.
The greatest performance by an Armenian team came in 1975 when Ararat Yerevan reached the quarter finals of the European Cup. In the second round, Ararat faced Cork Celtic with the Armenian side winning 2-1 at Flower Lodge and subsequently progressing on a 7-1 aggregate.
Ararat’s reward for eliminating Cork Celtic was a glamorous quarter final clash with Bayern Munich’s greatest team, which Franz Beckenbauer was midway through leading to three consecutive European Cup victories. The Germans won the tie 2-1 but half a century later Ararat’s 1-0 victory in the second leg remains the best result ever secured by an Armenian side.
Armenia have never played in a major championship, although Youri Djorkaeff and Alain Boghossian – who both won the 1998 World Cup with France – have Armenian parents. The man given responsibility for securing a first ever qualification for Armenia is Yeghishe Melikyan who was appointed manager in August and the Ireland game will be the fourth match of his tenure.
Should Melikyan successfully navigate his trip to Dublin he will breathe a sign of relief having already equalled the record of his predecessor John van’t Schip, with the Dutchman’s failure to win any of his four matches ending his tenure as Armenia manager after just five months.
