Our national football team will play its 7th match of Euro 2016 qualifying round. In just two months, we will learn which teams secured entries for the championship in France.
In our case we have almost no hope, although there are some optimists still believing we will book our place there. While advancing to Euro 2016 final seemed most realistic and possible for our team, we eventually failed to fulfill the task.
The problem is not that we don’t believe or trust the national team. A glance at the first qualifying group is enough to understand everything. Group leader Portugal is ahead of us by 11 points and Denmark and Albania are ahead of us by nine points. Serbia is probably in a worse state than we are – after the disciplinary punishments UEFA imposed on the team, they have only -2 points. Only a miracle and the confident and highly dedicated game of our players can bestow victories on the fans in the remaining three matches.
These are our concerns while the match against Serbia is nearing. The match will be held at Karađorđe Stadium in Novi Sad without any audience. The 1-1 draw of the teams in the first leg was probably the most effective for them. Needless to say how important this match is for the two teams to regain reputation and trust.
We will try to compensate the absence of fans in Armenia. Three days after the match, Armenia will host its guests. We know we don’t have a big choice of stadiums and so the match will again take place at Vazgen Sargsyan Republican Stadium.
Photo: Mediamax
Despite its few number of seats (14 000) it does not always get full of fans. Everything depends on the team’s effectiveness and who we are playing. The Republican stadium was full when hosting the top teams, which were Portugal and France in this qualifying.
We will host Denmark on September 7. Over the past years we have been seeing them almost as many times as our team. Tor roads of our teams have crossed at 2014 World Cup, and will cross at Euro 2016 and 2018 World Cup.
The 4-0 victory our team scored over Denmark in the previous qualifying round was perhaps one of the most impressive ones. However, we failed to show such a result in the first leg of this qualifying and Denmark won us 2-1. It’s now the turn of our players to win, although Denmark plays quite confidently and bids for one of Euro 2016 entries.
Denmark will need victory on September 7 way more than Armenia. The team will go all out not to let the three points slip through its fingers.
Everything is long over for us. The Serbs will use the match against Armenia on September 7 to get ready for 2018 World Cup and that match might serve as a new beginning for us to score new and anticipated victories.
Hasmik Babayan
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