The Western Armenia CONIFA team during the singing of the national anthem.
BY ROBERT O’CONNORÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Special to Asbarez
Some came to confront the past.
Hiratch Yagan is bruised and emotional. He hasn’t bothered to shower, or even to change out of his soiled royal blue and white strip. There will be time for that later, and the hurt is still too fresh.
Inside the adjacent clubhouse, 18 jubilant men in all white swill beer and sing songs, the defiant refrains of victory. Yagan barely glances up, passing by them without a word, his eyes fixed on the ground.
Yagan shoulders a great responsibility. That his teammates are here, representing the disenfranchised Armenians of eastern Turkey at the ConIFA World Football Cup in London, is all because of him.
It was his idea, in 2014, upon learning of the existence of the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, to reach out to the diaspora community of Armenians in Europe, in the hope of building a team to compete alongside the dozens of peoples around the world similarly dispossessed by the invisible hand of history.
Born in Brussels, Yagan lives as an expat in Nyon, Switzerland. There, he competes for third-tier outfit Stade Nyonaise. The club plays on the very doorstep of UEFA headquarters, European football’s governing body that dictates who may and may not join the European football family. For Western Armenia, as with the other 15 teams competing here in London, no such recognition is forthcoming.
The logo of the Western Armenia team on Yagan’s jersey.
“This isn’t about being separate from Armenia,â€
