On June 7 “Football Plus” sports weekly published a piece by the founder of
the weekly, a football commenter Suren Baghdasarian, titled “Ousted from the
pitch…” According to Suren Baghdasarian, he was unable to make a complete
report on a football match of Armenian Championship, since before the game started
an employee of the Republican Stadium asked him to leave. The director of the
stadium, as Baghdasarian writes, confirmed that he was prohibited from attending
matches on the pitch. When requested to show the official prohibition paper,
the director assured that it would be done the next day, however, the promise
was not fulfilled, the story tells. Besides, as the author of the article maintains,
“the President of Football Federation of Armenia Ruben Hayrapetian decreed that
no “Football Plus” staff should be allowed to enter the Federation, no information
should be provided to them and their presence at events of the Federation should
be banned”. “For almost two months “Football Plus” is being subjected to a certain
information blockade by the Federation”, Suren Baghdasarian stressed.
As YPC was told by the press secretary of the Football Federation of Armenia
Araik Manukian, the Federation has nothing to do with the incident at the Republican
Stadium. According to Araik Manukian, the staff of “Football Plus” never made
an appropriate information request as well as never expressed a wish to be present
at the events, held by the Federation; therefore, there are no grounds for the
accusations of “information blockade” of the weekly by the Federation. Should
a written inquiry be made, there will be no problem of information provision
to the weekly, Araik Manukian said.
