Tiknizyan and Karlen Hovhannisyan React to Armenia’s Draw with Kazakhstan

The Armenia national team played out a draw with Kazakhstan in a friendly match held in Yerevan, which ended 1-1. After the game, national team defender Nair Tiknizyan and midfielder Karlen Hovhannisyan shared their impressions, pointing out both the positive aspects and the team’s main problem — the conversion of scoring chances.

For Karlen Hovhannisyan, this match was a special one: the midfielder started for the Armenia national team for the first time. The player admitted that if the team failed to win, it means not all of the tasks were fulfilled.

“It was my first time starting the match from the opening minutes. Overall, I would assess the game as normal, but since we couldn’t win, it means we fell short somewhere and did not complete all the tasks. Of course, together with the coaching staff, we will analyze our positive and negative aspects and work on our mistakes. I think we were just a little unlucky in the final phase. We will do our best to perform better in the next match,” Hovhannisyan said.

Nair Tiknizyan assessed the result of the match in a more emotional and self-critical manner. The defender thanked the fans for their support and emphasized that the players wanted to give them winning emotions.

“It is very disappointing to finish the game without a victory. I would like to separately thank the fans who were at the stadium today. Their support is priceless. We understand that these are not easy times, but people still come and support us. We really wanted to finish the match with winning emotions. Regardless of the result, we left everything on the pitch,” Tiknizyan said.

According to the defender, Armenia’s issue with converting chances once again became very clear during the match. Tiknizyan admitted that he himself had several good opportunities to score.

“Today, the problem of finishing chances was very evident in our game. I also had several good moments myself, which I will probably still see in my dreams. We will definitely draw conclusions. Now we are looking forward to the match against Moldova. I hope that in the next game we will be able to correct our mistakes and score many goals,” the player added.

Armenia, led by Yeghishe Melikyan, will play their next friendly match on June 9 in Yerevan against Moldova.