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World Soccer
Jan 1 2014
Armenia and Azerbaijan pairing was the last thing UEFA wanted
On November 28th in Nyon the draw for the under-19 European
Championship qualifiers due to be held next October threw up the match
that nobody wanted, the administrators dreaded, and that nobody in
European football seems willing to take responsibility for.
UEFA's response has been to take the unprecedented step of re-drawing
part of the competition, side-stepping the problem rather than
confronting it. But then Armenia and Azerbaijan have long since proved
their relationship to be unmanageable on a footballing level, either
between themselves or by an arbiter, and since the first major
breakdown of relations back in 2006 the disasters have piled up.
The bitter gridlock between the two young republics that saturates the
frozen conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh mountain range continues to
cause headaches for diplomats and preserve personal tragedy for
civilians but football, true to its dogmatic hyperbole that it can
cause social groundswell like no other man-made force, has caused the
most conspicuous movements in recent years in this most static of
disputes, though none of them towards progress.
Frequent border skirmishes keep the stand-off on the periphery of
international attention but otherwise the conflict remains stagnant,
shoe-horned into the increasingly combustible quasi-Cold War agenda
between Russia and the West that has seen Kiev fall into civic
meltdown and threatens the economic recoveries of the recession
former-Soviet bloc. In the end war will probably be prevented in
Nagorno-Karabakh by what the two parties fear they have to lose
through belligerence. Football - its utility cowed and its governors
prosaic - looks set to continue to lose out also.
The pairing of Armenia and Azerbaijan for next year's qualifiers
brought back uncomfortable memories of the last time the two sides
came out of the hat together for a previous under-19 match back in the
autumn of 2006. The crowd that day, buoyed by partisan strands of
Armenian Cypriots in Nicosia, reacted angrily to obscene gestures and
provocations made by the young Azeri players, storming the pitch to
confront the team in a disturbance that took police over half an hour
to subdue.
Since the match was played on neutral ground and the fans involved
couldn't be proved in any official sense to be the responsibility of
the Armenian FA no charges were ever brought, but the incident augured
badly enough for next year's qualifiers that the balls from the draw
were gathered up and tossed back into the hat.
Also clear from the Cyprus riot is how fervently the mutual
ill-feeling is felt amongst ex-pat communities, for whom the
Armenia-Azerbaijan divide - sometimes lazily framed as a
Christian-Islamic feud but actually bearing the hallmarks of the
struggles for self-determination that pock-marked the end of the last
century - forms a definitive part of a national identity.
Whether on a football pitch in Nicosia or a diplomatic summit in Minsk
- from where Russia, France and the US still sporadically try to
arbitrate the war - the shockwaves from Nagorno-Karabakh resonate far
beyond the enclave's modestly picturesque foothills.
Those few that still populate the mountains - the 2006 estimate of
138,000 is wilting as young Armenians migrate en masse from the
shrinking agricultural economy into urban Russia - have their lives
coloured by the memory of the 30,000 or more that perished in the war
that followed the break-up of the Soviet empire.
Both Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan suffered a refugee crisis, and
the mass displacement that occurred as each became inhospitable no-go
zones for persecuted minorities is still felt today, as thousands in
surrounding villages continue to stare up into the hills at their
homes being used to house occupying forces.
A return to all-out conflict seems unlikely, in spite of border
clashes that have recently become so frequent that US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton showed up in Yerevan last year to make the case
for détente. The Azeri state has been slowly growing its armed forces
in terms of investment and personnel but the most immediate threat is
being felt by the hamstrung economies of Armenia and the Karabakh
region, for which the isolation imposed by the stand-off continues to
stymy any real hope of desperately needed modernisation.With
diplomatic tensions high but willingness to take action low it's small
wonder that the most visible demonstrations in recent years have been
made through football.
Or, rather, a lack of it. A few months before the trouble in Cyprus
the 2006 CIS Cup was rocked when Armenian champions Pyunik refused to
face Azerbaijan's Neftchi Baku in Moscow's Luzhniki stadium on
security grounds, claiming the safety of the club's players and fans
couldn't be guaranteed.
Neftchi countered and so too did the organisers who gave written
assurances that extra provisions would be made to minimise any risk of
unrest, but Pyunik rejected the plea and flew home on the morning of
the match.
The Russian Football Union was bullish in its response: `Such actions
do not represent football, which aims to unite not divide people.' A
year later when the senior national sides were due to meet in
back-to-back Euro 2008 qualifiers the Azeri refused to face an
Armenian team on home soil, in spite of the latter volunteering to
foot the bill for security in both fixtures. Azerbaijan offered to
play the games on neutral territory, Armenia vetoed the proposal and
UEFA played the only card it had left and simply cancelled both
matches.
For the Azeri the prospect of hosting the Armenians was akin to
welcoming the sporting representatives of an occupying force, which
for a nation that keeps its citizens in check by pedalling an almost
Stalinesque cult of personality via a fiercely nationalist regime was
never likely to receive moral or political sanction.
In the end the cancelled matches and subsequent lost points had little
impact on the outcome of qualification. Armenia had just taken seven
points from three tough games and would have fancied themselves for
six more, but a solitary draw against Serbia in their final five games
meant they finished well adrift of the cut-off for the finals. But
five years of rapid progress has seen the team come within two points
of a play-off berth in each of the last two qualifying campaigns and
six lost points would represent a major blow in future competitions as
Armenia seek to become just the fourth former-Soviet state to make it
to a major finals.
The feeling in some corners is that UEFA need to work harder to find a
football-based solution - it would be a shame if progress were to be
hindered by the feuding of two states who feel so penned in by
circumstance that football is the only outlet for exercising their
frustrations.
But Armenia and Azerbaijan have been in check for so long now it's
hard to see a way out for either side, even if the will was there.
Armenia's military clout is dwarfed by the Azeri and no offensive
could realistically happen without being sanctioned from Moscow, yet
the hostilities continue to shackle fiscal recovery.
On the other hand Azeri president Ilham Aliyev knows that the longer
Nagorno-Karabakh remains occupied the more pressure falls on him to
stand up for national pride - but at the risk of derailing the only
former-Soviet economy to have remained untouched by the global
recession and inviting hostility from Russia. It seems a shame that
the footballers won't get their chance to show the diplomats it's not
all about one-upmanship.
By Robert O'Connor
http://www.worldsoccer.com/247/armenia-and-azerbaijan-pairing-was-the-last-thing-uefa-wanted
Jan 1 2014
Armenia and Azerbaijan pairing was the last thing UEFA wanted
On November 28th in Nyon the draw for the under-19 European
Championship qualifiers due to be held next October threw up the match
that nobody wanted, the administrators dreaded, and that nobody in
European football seems willing to take responsibility for.
UEFA's response has been to take the unprecedented step of re-drawing
part of the competition, side-stepping the problem rather than
confronting it. But then Armenia and Azerbaijan have long since proved
their relationship to be unmanageable on a footballing level, either
between themselves or by an arbiter, and since the first major
breakdown of relations back in 2006 the disasters have piled up.
The bitter gridlock between the two young republics that saturates the
frozen conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh mountain range continues to
cause headaches for diplomats and preserve personal tragedy for
civilians but football, true to its dogmatic hyperbole that it can
cause social groundswell like no other man-made force, has caused the
most conspicuous movements in recent years in this most static of
disputes, though none of them towards progress.
Frequent border skirmishes keep the stand-off on the periphery of
international attention but otherwise the conflict remains stagnant,
shoe-horned into the increasingly combustible quasi-Cold War agenda
between Russia and the West that has seen Kiev fall into civic
meltdown and threatens the economic recoveries of the recession
former-Soviet bloc. In the end war will probably be prevented in
Nagorno-Karabakh by what the two parties fear they have to lose
through belligerence. Football - its utility cowed and its governors
prosaic - looks set to continue to lose out also.
The pairing of Armenia and Azerbaijan for next year's qualifiers
brought back uncomfortable memories of the last time the two sides
came out of the hat together for a previous under-19 match back in the
autumn of 2006. The crowd that day, buoyed by partisan strands of
Armenian Cypriots in Nicosia, reacted angrily to obscene gestures and
provocations made by the young Azeri players, storming the pitch to
confront the team in a disturbance that took police over half an hour
to subdue.
Since the match was played on neutral ground and the fans involved
couldn't be proved in any official sense to be the responsibility of
the Armenian FA no charges were ever brought, but the incident augured
badly enough for next year's qualifiers that the balls from the draw
were gathered up and tossed back into the hat.
Also clear from the Cyprus riot is how fervently the mutual
ill-feeling is felt amongst ex-pat communities, for whom the
Armenia-Azerbaijan divide - sometimes lazily framed as a
Christian-Islamic feud but actually bearing the hallmarks of the
struggles for self-determination that pock-marked the end of the last
century - forms a definitive part of a national identity.
Whether on a football pitch in Nicosia or a diplomatic summit in Minsk
- from where Russia, France and the US still sporadically try to
arbitrate the war - the shockwaves from Nagorno-Karabakh resonate far
beyond the enclave's modestly picturesque foothills.
Those few that still populate the mountains - the 2006 estimate of
138,000 is wilting as young Armenians migrate en masse from the
shrinking agricultural economy into urban Russia - have their lives
coloured by the memory of the 30,000 or more that perished in the war
that followed the break-up of the Soviet empire.
Both Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan suffered a refugee crisis, and
the mass displacement that occurred as each became inhospitable no-go
zones for persecuted minorities is still felt today, as thousands in
surrounding villages continue to stare up into the hills at their
homes being used to house occupying forces.
A return to all-out conflict seems unlikely, in spite of border
clashes that have recently become so frequent that US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton showed up in Yerevan last year to make the case
for détente. The Azeri state has been slowly growing its armed forces
in terms of investment and personnel but the most immediate threat is
being felt by the hamstrung economies of Armenia and the Karabakh
region, for which the isolation imposed by the stand-off continues to
stymy any real hope of desperately needed modernisation.With
diplomatic tensions high but willingness to take action low it's small
wonder that the most visible demonstrations in recent years have been
made through football.
Or, rather, a lack of it. A few months before the trouble in Cyprus
the 2006 CIS Cup was rocked when Armenian champions Pyunik refused to
face Azerbaijan's Neftchi Baku in Moscow's Luzhniki stadium on
security grounds, claiming the safety of the club's players and fans
couldn't be guaranteed.
Neftchi countered and so too did the organisers who gave written
assurances that extra provisions would be made to minimise any risk of
unrest, but Pyunik rejected the plea and flew home on the morning of
the match.
The Russian Football Union was bullish in its response: `Such actions
do not represent football, which aims to unite not divide people.' A
year later when the senior national sides were due to meet in
back-to-back Euro 2008 qualifiers the Azeri refused to face an
Armenian team on home soil, in spite of the latter volunteering to
foot the bill for security in both fixtures. Azerbaijan offered to
play the games on neutral territory, Armenia vetoed the proposal and
UEFA played the only card it had left and simply cancelled both
matches.
For the Azeri the prospect of hosting the Armenians was akin to
welcoming the sporting representatives of an occupying force, which
for a nation that keeps its citizens in check by pedalling an almost
Stalinesque cult of personality via a fiercely nationalist regime was
never likely to receive moral or political sanction.
In the end the cancelled matches and subsequent lost points had little
impact on the outcome of qualification. Armenia had just taken seven
points from three tough games and would have fancied themselves for
six more, but a solitary draw against Serbia in their final five games
meant they finished well adrift of the cut-off for the finals. But
five years of rapid progress has seen the team come within two points
of a play-off berth in each of the last two qualifying campaigns and
six lost points would represent a major blow in future competitions as
Armenia seek to become just the fourth former-Soviet state to make it
to a major finals.
The feeling in some corners is that UEFA need to work harder to find a
football-based solution - it would be a shame if progress were to be
hindered by the feuding of two states who feel so penned in by
circumstance that football is the only outlet for exercising their
frustrations.
But Armenia and Azerbaijan have been in check for so long now it's
hard to see a way out for either side, even if the will was there.
Armenia's military clout is dwarfed by the Azeri and no offensive
could realistically happen without being sanctioned from Moscow, yet
the hostilities continue to shackle fiscal recovery.
On the other hand Azeri president Ilham Aliyev knows that the longer
Nagorno-Karabakh remains occupied the more pressure falls on him to
stand up for national pride - but at the risk of derailing the only
former-Soviet economy to have remained untouched by the global
recession and inviting hostility from Russia. It seems a shame that
the footballers won't get their chance to show the diplomats it's not
all about one-upmanship.
By Robert O'Connor
http://www.worldsoccer.com/247/armenia-and-azerbaijan-pairing-was-the-last-thing-uefa-wanted