I do not have a good knowledge about modern football, you need to watch, read, know the names of the players and coaches, which requires a lot of time. I think I had better knowledge about the football of my youth when we all were fans of Yerevan “Ararat” team. I remember both the players and the matches today, after over 40 years later. Our guys were playing a beautiful, spectacular, technically well-equipped and, as they say, “creative” football. They certainly deserve our reverence.
But it was a different football and a different era. The football players of the Soviet leading teams were professional but were registered in a factory or a company and were receiving a salary from there. For the sake of some inexplicable “principles”, it was pretended that our sport is “amateur” and there are no market relations in our country at all. (In fact, these relations were actually market relations but “from underneath”, “illegal”). The hypocritical lie about “socialism”, plus the “iron curtain” in close connection with it did not allow our talented professionals, including the football players, to individually go to the international arena. But yet, it was not the worst. The absence of free mobility of genuine, transparent market relations and people and product (including intellectual products and ideas) did not allow for understanding “who costs how much.”
This is true not only in football. Thousands of books, musical composing, scientific works were written and paintings were created in the Soviet Union but most of them were “consumed” in the domestic “market” under the leadership of bureaucrats, while the works that were appearing beyond the borders of the country, they were not always selected by “objective standards”. Later, when everything collapsed, many people began showing surprise, “I am an author of 6 books, aren’t I? Why am I not honored anymore?” Or, “I am an academician. Why are my valuable articles not published in the international vocational magazines?” The answer to this question is obvious, isn’t it?
The Soviet teams were playing in various international tournaments, sometimes with some success but we did not know that every football player – an INDIVIDUAL had a value by international standards. And now, we know that Gibraltar will not take this player, this one is “Kuban”, this one is “Spartak” and this one is “Manchester United”. And the one who will play for this English club is exemplary not only in terms of football. Armenian citizen Henrikh Mkhitaryan is a good example to his fellow citizens with his attitude to life and work. Read his interviews and you will see that he is also exemplary in diligence, humility, discipline, professionalism, discreet, prudent judgment, why not, also in terms of proficiency in languages. Genuine market relations reveal not only the talents of an individual but also (do not be surprised) the best human features.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
