Marked for João Bravim
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Dec 2026
Kamo Hovhannisyan falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad21 Dec 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ararat-Armenia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Artur Serobyan has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Ararat-Armenia will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match19 Aug 2026
A 2‑0 win over Shirak, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.54, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 26. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market24 Aug 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Ararat-Armenia can pretend not to have heard.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Ararat-Armenia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Karen Muradyan is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Víctor Villasanti was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The terraces24 Aug 2026
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Too much change too quickly at Ararat-Armenia
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Artur Serobyan and Ararat-Armenia agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Ararat-Armenia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Karen Muradyan is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Market3 Aug 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Ararat-Armenia have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Junior Julio in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ararat-Armenia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market3 Aug 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Market3 Aug 2026
The clock runs on João Bravim's contract
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.