Yeghishe Melikyan after Portugal: “It was very painful. We are not yet ready to play at this level”

The head coach of the Armenian national team, Yeghishe Melikyan, spoke at the post-match press conference after a heavy 1:9 defeat to Portugal in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, held on November 16 in Porto. The coach admitted that the team was not ready to face an opponent of such caliber but emphasized that this experience should become an important lesson for future growth.

On the match result
“I think this is not the best result; it was very painful. We must understand that we are not yet ready to play against such a strong national team. We are still too young and need to grow. We will come back stronger,” Melikyan noted.

On the reasons for the heavy defeat
Answering a question about whether the difficult weather conditions could have influenced the match, the coach dismissed this idea:
“I don’t think it was the rain. It was more about our mistakes. The second and third goals came after errors — we did not expect such things.”

According to Melikyan, the team is not yet ready to withstand the pressure of matches at this level:
“The players are not yet psychologically prepared to play at this level. Such simple mistakes show that there is a lack of self-confidence.”

On next steps
The coach stressed that the national team needs additional friendly matches to stabilize its game:
“We need friendly matches to bring everything back to normal. We must learn from this match so that this never happens again.”

The Armenian national team finished the 2026 World Cup qualification in last (4th) place in Group F with 3 points.