Ireland\u2019s conquerors Armenia want to coax Henrikh Mkhitaryan out of international retirement for next month\u2019s World Cup qualification rematch in Dublin.<\/p>\n
The former Manchester United and Arsenal midfielder walked away from his national team in 2022 just five caps short of becoming their first-ever centurion.<\/p>\n
He bagged 32 goals for his country, including one at Lansdowne Road in 2011. That match acted as effectively the decider for a Euro 2012 playoff spot.<\/p>\n
A disputed red card issued to Armenian goalkeeper Roman Berezovsky for an alleged handball outside the box proved the game-changer and the Armenians still rue the injustice as central to blocking their route to a first-ever major tournament.<\/p>\n
Armenia are in bullish mood after slaying Ireland on Tuesday and new manager Yegishe Melikyan has contacted the 36-year-old about joining their quest to mount a shock tilt at reaching next year\u2019s World Cup.<\/p>\n
They travel to take on Hungary on October 11 before visiting Ireland three days later.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday I spoke with Mkhitaryan,\u201d Melikyan told local media in Yerevan about approaching the Inter Milan playmaker.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t say exactly what but we talked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am preparing to go to Italy to meet Henrikh face-to-face and will try to bring him back. For now, I don\u2019t know his opinion on this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s conquerors Armenia want to coax Henrikh Mkhitaryan out of international retirement for next month\u2019s World Cup qualification…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1113,61,60,2539,5782,43,5783],"class_list":{"0":"post-13083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-fai","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-league-of-ireland","12":"tag-local-soccer","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-premiership"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}