A football player called up to the Russian national team refused to play for it
[ad_1]
The 22-year-old player of the Russian football club Pary Nizhny Novgorod, Edgar Sevikyan, who was called up to the Russian national team for the September training camp, refused to play for the national team and announced his decision to join the Armenian national team.
“I hope that the fans will understand my choice and independent decision,” Sevikyan said, without explaining what exactly dictated it.
According to Sports.ru, the Russian Football Union tried to block the transfer of the player to another national team, but to no avail. Sevikyan has already received a call to the national team of Armenia: unlike Russia, it is participating in the qualifying tournament of the European Championship, which will be held next year in Germany.
Edgar Sevikyan is a citizen of the Russian Federation, born in Moscow. He is a pupil of the school of the capital club “Lokomotiv”. The player played a total of 47 matches for the youth and youth national teams of Russia, scoring 14 goals in them. He received a call-up to the main team of the country, which agreed to hold a friendly match with Qatar on September 12, for the first time.
At the end of July, Sevikyan unexpectedly announced that if he had received an invitation to the Armenian national team, he “would gladly go to play for his country and nation.”
- After the start of Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee and many sports associations imposed sanctions on Russian athletes. They are allowed to compete only under a neutral flag, and some are not allowed at all. The Russian national football team and Russian football clubs were also sanctioned. They cannot participate in either world or European tournaments.
- As a result, due to the war and sanctions, more than two hundred Russian athletes have changed or are about to change their sports citizenship in order to be able to compete in international competitions. Among them are both novice athletes and world-famous ones – for example, the winner of the World Chess Championship, Alexandra Kosteniuk, who now plays for Switzerland.
[ad_2]
Original Source Link
