Why is Qarabag – OL played in Baku and not in Agdam?

The Tofig Bahramov stadium where FK Qarabag plays

Thursday, FK Qarabag will host OL at the Tofig Bahramov stadium in Baku. However, the Azeri club is that of the town of Agdam, located much further west of the capital. But he is the symbol of the endless war affecting the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The Olympic stadium is reserved for Champions League posters, but thatOL Rest assured, he will not play in a reduced-size stadium Thursday evening (6:45 p.m.). Pierre Sage players will already be able to get a first impression of the Tofig Bahramov stadium this Wednesday with the match eve training scheduled for mid-afternoon (French time). However, the FK Arab is far from being a Baku club, very far in fact.

If the club has set up shop in the Azeri capital for several decades now, it represents above all the city of Agdam. Why isn't the match being played there? Quite simply because theAzerbaijan is launched into an endless war with theArmenia. This has been going on for 40 years and despite numerous ceasefires, the scenes of violence never really stop between the two border countries.

An endless ethnic war

Borders, this is the big part of the problem and which explains why the FK Arab now plays its home games in Baku. The city ofAgdamnicknamed the “Hiroshima of the Caucasus” and which became a ghost town, suffered the full brunt of the open war between the two countries in the early 1990s, with the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh at stake. The latter is a crucial issue between Armenia and Azerbaijan, both claiming enjoyment of the region.

A war then broke out at the end of the USSR, leaving more than 30,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of people displaced, including the football club. Nagorno-Karabakh, in Armenian hands until 2020, was “returned” to Azerbaijan four years ago following Russia's intervention and therefore a new exodus of populations. This did not necessarily calm the conflict with trench battles still present since.