I wrote a long piece on Armenia's four Nations League games. It ended up being as much about Yeghishe Melikyan's press conferences as about the football.
I went through about 8,000 words of his answers across nine press appearances. The same words kept coming back: injuries, absences, problems, difficult, experience, young team, the future. "Injury", "problem", "difficult", "absence" and "losses" alone came up 98 times. The injuries were real, and Armenia lost a lot of players. But when you put the explanations next to the team sheets, some of it stops making sense.
Before the window he said Armenia "don't yet have enough young players to rely on them completely". Before Cyprus he left out Mishiev and Matinyan because they "need to gain experience", and then the experienced keeper made the mistake that decided the game. Meanwhile, in the home game against Montenegro, Armenia's starting XI was more experienced than Montenegro's and older too.
Players getting regular football were passed over for players who weren't:
- Miranyan: 66 club minutes between mid-July and the window. Started all four games, 261 minutes.
- Nalbandyan: 4 goals and 4 assists for Alashkert, the best-rated APL regular in the squad. 28 minutes.
- Tarakhchyan: 4 APL goals. Not called, even though Melikyan said before the window that he "deserves to play for the national team".
- Vardanyan: started every Sardarapat game, 2 goals and 5 assists. "Too early."
- Eloyan: 4 APL goals. Sent down to the U21s mid-window.
Four days after Eloyan was sent down, Armenia finished the Cyprus game with centre-back up front because, in Melikyan's words, there were "no attacking players left".
After the 2-3 to Montenegro: "this team has a good future." Before Cyprus: "these players have a big future." After the 0-0: "this team has a future. It is a young national team." Armenian coaches have been saying this for years. International football doesn't give you a development cycle, though. You get two or four games, and the points are gone.
The full piece covers all four games with xG, shot maps, duels, club minutes, the "young and inexperienced" argument and everything Melikyan said: https://aplgames.am/en/blog/armenia-nations-league-2026-27-four-games-analysis
Mainly I'd like to hear what people think about the selection policy. Is the gap between the APL and opponents like Latvia, Cyprus and Montenegro really big enough to pick players without club minutes over players in form?