for the Armenians of Marseille, a match with a “bitter” taste
Published on : Modified :
Marseilles (AFP) – For the large Armenian diaspora in Marseille, the match between OM and the Qarabag team on Thursday at the Vélodrome stadium (9 p.m.) in the Europa League Conference will have a “bitter” taste, fifteen months after the bitter defeat of Armenia. by Azerbaijan to Nagorny Karabakh.
“We are going to crush them 5-0”, prophesies Roger Vartan, at the head of the La Rotonde bar in the Beaumont district, where a large part of the Armenian diaspora of Marseilles resides, one of the largest in Europe, estimated to some 80,000 people.
Thursday, it is with particular attention that these supporters watch the match between their team, 2nd in the Ligue 1 standings, against “FC Barcelona of the Caucasus”, one of the flagship clubs of the Azerbaijani championship, eight times national champion , now based in the capital, Baku.
If successful in these play-offs, the match of which will be played on February 24, OM would reach the round of 16 of this first Europa League Conference in history. But for some Armenians interviewed, this meeting goes beyond the simple sporting issue.
In the fall of 2020, their country of origin faced their neighbor and sworn enemy to keep control of Nagorny Karabakh, this region that was once Azerbaijani but populated mainly by Armenians and has come under the control of the authorities in Yerevan for a first time. war in the 1990s. In barely six weeks, this new conflict, which left more than 6,500 dead, including 3,700 on the Armenian side, forced Armenia to agree to a ceasefire and to cede large parts of this territory.
Trauma
“Why are they called Qarabag? There are buildings over 5,000 years old that belong to us,” protested Ichkan, a Frenchman of Armenian origin, about the Azerbaijani club formerly based in Agdam, a city that the club had been forced to leave for Baku in 1993 after the first war.
Sponsored by the giant of the agro-food industry Azersun, owned by the Turkish businessman Abdolbari Goozal, Qarabag is the football club “the most popular in the country, even more than the national team”, underlines with Azerbaijani sports journalist Elmir Aliyev told AFP.
This stardom is fueled by patriotic feelings in particular, with the club embodying the trauma felt for decades by Azerbaijan of having lost Nagorno Karabakh to Armenia: “A lot in Azerbaijan contains the club because of its victories in internationally, but also because of its name”, analyzes the journalist.
Even if the team now passes more than 300 km from its hometown, resentment is strong on the Armenian side.
“I would still rather lose against PSG than against them,” Ickhan continues, at the table of a café where a photo of the 1993 Marseille team, winners of the Champions League, is displayed.
“Kill all Armenians”
“It’s only football”, corrects Jean-Luc, the boss of this troquet, who regularly returns to the land of his ancestors: “On the ground, it is not Azeris who play, but employees who are there for the money we offer them”.
“So much the better that we face them (rather than a big European team, editor’s note), it will be easier, we win a round”, he adds amused.
For Pascal Chamassian, former president of the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF) Marseille-Provence, on the other hand, this match has a “bitter taste”: “It should never have taken place if UEFA (organizer of the competition, editor’s note) had taken its responsibilities and excluded this club out of respect for human rights”.
And Mr. Chamassian recalls the call to “kill all Armenians, old and young, without distinction”, launched on social networks by the communication manager of the Qarabag club, Nurlan Ibrahimov, during the last war.
If UEFA suspended Mr. Ibrahimov for life from all football-related activity, the Armenian Federation (FFA) had claimed, in vain, the exclusion of the club from European competitions.
© 2022 AFP