Football veteran Tarlan Ahmadov clarified this in his statement to apasport.az, Offsideplus.az reports.

He said that the Armenian factor influenced the national careers of the Azerbaijani U-18 team, which won the European Championship in 1990. Although both Ahmadov and Ruslan Lukin were continental champions, they were deliberately excluded from the 1991 U-20 World Cup and the 1992 Olympics continental championship: “In 1990, we became European champions in Hungary. It was followed by the World Cup. Nikita Simonyan, who currently works for the Russian Football Union, was then the head of the USSR national team, and then the first deputy chairman of the USSR Football Federation. All the lists of the USSR national teams passed under his hands. The war in Nagorno-Karabakh was in full swing. He kept me out with Ruslan Lukin. 

Ahmadov stressed that Nikita Simonyan, who held senior positions in the USSR and the Russian Football Union for many years, was not the first Azerbaijani victim: “We had an administrator. he has no eyes to see you. I was a young footballer, I lived my best period in "Neftchi". Then they created the CIS team, and the head coach was Boris Ignatev. Our name was included in the list, but what happened next was rejected by us. "

The former captain of our national team noted that the words of the administrator were confirmed years later by the well-known Russian coach Boris Ignatev: He said that at that time some people opposed your invitation and did not allow you to go to the national team. Ignatev was also the head coach of Arif Asadov at the world championship. Later it became clear that Simonyan did not want the Azerbaijani representative in the CIS team due to the conflict.

It should be noted that the CIS team, which failed to play without Azerbaijani players, could not qualify for Barcelona-1992.