“It Will Lead to Irreversible Consequences”: FAF Statement

The Armenian First Front (FAF) has issued a statement addressing the Premier League club "West Armenia", which has supported Armen Melikbekyan. This comes in light of the canceled match between "Pyunik" and "West Armenia" today.

As has become known, the owner of "West Armenia" has not been paying the salaries of both players and staff for several months, nor has he made the payments necessary for the stadium and other club needs.

In the previous season, there was much discussion in the football community about match-fixing involving "West Armenia", with several in-depth articles published by the news outlet "Hetq".

Despite this, "West Armenia" remained unpunished. The Football Federation of Armenia (FFA) failed to submit any reports to UEFA regarding suspicious matches, no criminal cases were initiated, and the club owners were able to successfully sell the club or engage in acceptance processes, of course after securing votes in the FFA presidential elections.

At the beginning of this season, the team acquired Australian businessman Robert Bassil. He claims to be overseeing the construction process of the national stadium and talks about holding “West Armenia”’s home games there.

Shortly thereafter, Bassil presumably realized that the commencement of the national stadium project was not imminent and that he was wasting significant amounts of money, thus deciding to halt salary payments and various other payments, placing the club's players and the FFA in a difficult situation.

The players of "West Armenia" regularly visit the football federation, where the FFA leadership initially urged them and then issued ultimatums to participate in all games until January, promising to compensate salaries with UEFA solidarity funds in January, threatening, otherwise, that no payments would be made.

The point is that if a club withdraws from the league without playing 50% or more of its games, according to regulations, all results from the games held up to that point are canceled, which could seriously affect the competition standings and jeopardize the integrity of the Premier League.

At present, the players of "West Armenia" have not held any training sessions and today did not participate in the match against "Pyunik". This will mark "West Armenia"’s second technical defeat, and in the case of another, the club will be automatically expelled from the league.

We demand an urgent resolution to this issue and the payment of players' and staff salaries. The responsibility for this disgraceful situation lies with the current leadership of the FFA, whose protracted tenure will lead to irreversible consequences. There are numerous alerts and issues raised during this period, each of which we will address in upcoming communications.