ProddingAHoneyBadger
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Football Club Pyunik (Armenian: Ֆուտբոլային Ակումբ Փյունիկ), is an Armenian professional football club based in Yerevan. It is one of the most popular football clubs in Armenia.
Founded in 1996, Pyunik (Armenian for "Phoenix") has won a record 10 Armenian Championships, along with 5 Armenian Cups, and 6 Armenian Supercups. The club is considered one of the popular Armenian football clubs since the establishment of the Armenian Premier League in 1992.
Pyunik's new era began in 2001, when FC Pyunik absorbed FC Armenikum and automatically gained promotion to the Armenian Premier League without playing a single game in the lower leagues. The club's owner, wealthy Armenian businessman Ruben Hayrapetyan, took a much more serious approach to the club and brought star players such as Artavazd Karamyan and Arman Karamyan from other Armenian clubs. FC Pyunik improved more by bringing some foreign managers and players from Mali, Cameroon, Argentina and later from Romania. These improvements returned quick results, and Pyunik won the Armenian title the same year and the Armenian Cup in 2002. Later, for the first time in independent Armenian club history an Armenian club advanced to the second round in the Champions League. Afterwards, the club won the Armenian Premier League title ten times in a row.
Pyunik's main two rivals are Ararat and Banants, however, the rivalry with Ararat is a lot more fierce than that of Banants. The reason for that is because Ararat is known to be the most loved club of Yerevan because of its Soviet accomplishments, and Banants was originally based in the region of Kotayk, and was only moved to Yerevan in 2001. Another category Banants and Pyunik compete is their youth academies, which are considered to be the two best academies in the country.
FC Pyunik run their own youth training academy in Yerevan. Many of the Armenian national team players are graduates of the club's academy including Edgar Manucharyan, Robert Arzumanyan, Gevorg Ghazaryan, Karlen Mkrtchyan and Henrik Mkhitaryan. Many of them were members of the Armenia U-19 national team who participated in final tournament of the 2005 UEFA European Under-19 Football Championship.
Key Players:
The aim of this save is to take Pyunik back to the top of Armenia and then to make Armenia an unstoppable force in world football, without signing a player, I will be relying solely on the Youth Facilities. Luckily we have a very youthful squad and the oldest player is 1 28 year old who won't even make the team, every other player is aged 23 and under so the team will be together for well over a decade.
