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M.J. Graham

M.J. Graham

Michael Graham is The Armenian Weekly's soccer correspondent. Born and raised in Limerick, Ireland, Graham graduated from the University of Limerick with a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering. Passionate about soccer, Graham plays in and manages local adult soccer leagues in Massachusetts and is a holder of a U.S. Adult Amateur coaching license. Follow him on Twitter (@mjlgraham).

10 Comments

  1. Hi, Graham

    On “Up next for Armenia is a match versus Turkmenistan on March 22, followed by the much sterner test from the Czech Republic’s visit to Yerevan on March 26”.

    Armenia-Turkmenistan match was canceled. Unfortunately, Armenia hasn`t any possibilities to correct weak points before the match with Czechs

  2. Hi Suran, That is unfortunate. The match against Czech Republic is shaping up to be an important one.

  3. Hi Graham,
    As later was known, Turkmenistan will partake in the Asia Cup 2013 on March 22, but today we were informed that instead our national team will play against our U21 on that day.

  4. Hi Graham,
    A draw against luxembourg is a bad news for team Armenia! I wonder how they will climb in their own FIFA group B division, against tougher teams like Czech republic, or even Denmark??

  5. GB, although the result wasn’t ideal, the match itself had value to Armenia. It will be a much sterner test when qualifying resumes, but Armenia should compete well in those matches with a full strength side on the pitch.

  6. Luxembourg actually defeated Slovakia 2-1 at a friendly on September 2, 2011. It happens.

    Let’s just hope that’s the only similarity to Slovakia in our team’s trajectory because we all know what happened to the Slovaks at Zilina only a few days after that Luxembourg game.

    With Mkhitaryan and Özbiliz and some of these touted newcomers there, it’s still a disappointing result. Why wasn’t Movsisyan there?

  7. Hagop, Movsisyan is still not 100%, he is coming off a heel injury. He has played in friendly matches with Sparak recently as part of his rehab though, so that is good news.

  8. I don’t know what people are there in our federation who can’t schedule friendles, if yes, mostly against teams out of top 100. It was planned 3 friendlies to play this year before the first quali against Czechs but they could only schedule 2, against weak teams like Luxembourg and Turkmenistan. Minasyan told a month ago that after the match against Luxembourg he wants a match on next day against a team that should be at least as strong as Czechia but it was af course late and they couldn’t find any team they wanted. That people even don’t know that friendlies should be scheduled 1-2 years before and not in last moment. Today almost every fan is mad at them.

  9. David, I agree 100%. If Armenia is going to improve and become truly competitive consistently against any and all future opponents, they’ll need to schedule more friendlies against tougher competition- and schedule them more often as well. Perhaps other nations are reluctant to play Armenia at the moment because they’re considered minnows but they need to try to schedule better. They will not breakthrough to next level until they take this direction. The Armenian side has come world class players but to truly gage their strengths, weaknesses, needs, etc, they’ll have to take on better sides.

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