Yerevan court lifts block on football player limit, federation says
The federation says the decisions take effect seven days after publication, allowing the registration limit to apply again across Armenia’s top two divisions.
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The federation says the decisions take effect seven days after publication, allowing the registration limit to apply again across Armenia’s top two divisions.
The Football Federation of Armenia (FFA) says a Yerevan civil court’s 22 October decisions lifted temporary measures blocking a registration limit in Armenia’s top two football divisions of 15 players who were not trained in Armenia and/or are not members of Armenia’s senior or age-group national teams. Noah FC’s lawyer Arpine Hovhannisyan disputes that interpretation and says enforcement remains suspended, according to Sportaran’s 23 October report.
The federation had been barred from applying regulation 20.03 since August. According to the FFA, the court granted Noah’s request for temporary protection against that provision on 12 August, and enforcement proceedings on 13 August prohibited the federation from applying it.
In its 23 October statement, the FFA said the court’s two decisions of 22 October 2026 left the plaintiffs’ claims unexamined and lifted the temporary block. The federation said those decisions take effect seven days after publication.
Hovhannisyan says the ruling leaving the claims unexamined has not yet taken legal effect and that the temporary measures remain in force. She points to an earlier court refusal to lift those measures. According to her information, the FFA appealed that refusal, but its appeal has not yet been heard.
Sportaran distinguishes the court’s 30 September refusal to lift the block from the 22 October rulings. It notes that the earlier refusal does not establish whether a later order removed the block. Whether the cap can currently be enforced remains disputed: the disagreement concerns both the content of the 22 October orders and when they take legal effect.
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As quoted by the FFA, regulation 20.03 allows clubs in Armenia’s Premier League and First League to register at most 15 players who were not trained in Armenia and/or are not members of Armenia’s senior or age-group national teams. The cap covers each club’s first and second teams together on its seasonal registration lists—not 15 players for each team.
Although the federation describes it as a foreign-player limit, the rule uses training and national-team membership criteria, rather than nationality alone.
Noah and Anna Ohanyan, identified as an FFA executive committee member in the federation’s 23 October statement, challenged the committee’s 27 June decision approving professional competition regulations for the 2026–2027 season.
The FFA argued that both claimants had committed to arbitration—a process in which a designated tribunal, rather than an ordinary court, hears a dispute. It said its statutes and commitments made when Ohanyan sought an executive committee seat and Noah applied for federation membership required disputes to go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Both accounts describe the court’s decision to leave the claims unexamined as a question of which tribunal should hear them, not a ruling on whether the registration cap itself is lawful. Hovhannisyan says the plaintiffs intend to appeal that decision.
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