General director of FC “Urartu” Hrach Aghabekyan in an interview with the club’s press service spoke about the club’s upcoming plans and the development of youth football.

- Mr. Aghabekyan, the club’s rebranding is already at the final stage. Tell us a little about upcoming plans, in particular, about plans for the development of youth football.

- FC Urartu, which attaches great importance to the education of children and is the largest sports institution in the Malatia-Sebastia community, is launching multi-level cooperation programs with all schools in the administrative district, within which the schools will receive free sports equipment, and the opportunity to conduct physical education classes in the sports complex " Urartu ", master classes will be held from the players of our team and many other interesting and useful events and events, which we will report in the near future. We will also give a new impetus to football championships among schoolchildren and will try to attract as many boys as possible, as well as girls, because women's football is also an important area of our further development.

- “Urartu” was the first team in Armenia to start selling tickets for home matches. What do you say about this?

- Selling tickets for matches of the championship and the Cup of the country is not an end in itself, we are not doing it for profit, but we are trying to instill in the public the idea that football is a form of entertainment and leisure, and, as in other forms of entertainment, such as theater, cinema, You also have to pay to watch football. As everyone knows, the entrance to football games through tickets is one of the main pillars of the development of football, and with this step we are trying to integrate the public into the global football culture. In addition, I would like to note that the subscription system for our home meetings will be available soon and since the Armenian championship does not yet have a fixed calendar for match dates, you need to think over the subscription program correctly in order to avoid further problems on the schedule of matches.

- Tell us a little about youth football development programs.

- In short, I will answer your question: starting this year, all our large training fields are equipped with artificial lighting, which will allow children to organize summer classes in the cool time of the day, and in other months after school lessons, as our club has always attached great importance to school education. We have also developed new programs and programs that will improve communication between parents and the club, and will allow parents to learn more about the diet and optimize it along with the sports routine of their children. These programs and programs will be available soon on our website and on the YouTube channel.

- With the exception of regional clubs, Urartu is the only club representing a specific community - Malatia-Sebastia. What work is being done to popularize football in the community?

- One of our most important goals is to activate football in the community of Malatia-Sebastia, in the near future several football tournaments will be held on a community scale among different age groups, which will be announced in more detail in the near future. Before all our home matches, we also organize entertaining football competitions and prize draws in many public parks in the Malatia-Sebastia community, during which many children receive football gifts, match tickets and much more thanks to their football skills. I would like to say once again that for us it is very important by all possible means to increase interest in football of the younger generation in our community, which for some reason has become less interested in football, and integrate into football life.

FC “Urartu” will always work in this direction, and I am sure that it will contribute by turning Armenia into a football country step by step.