Former coach of the Uzbekistan national football team Samvel Babayan may be appointed head coach of Lokomotiv Tashkent, Tribuna.uz writes. 

According to the report, the current trainer of the football club Andrei Fyodorov decided to resign after the team's disastrous performance in the group stage of the AFC Champions League.  Now Babayan, who is an adviser to the club’s president, can take his place.

Fyodorov planned to leave the post of head coach after the last game of the group stage against the Qatari Al-Rayyan (3:2), but his resignation was postponed for unknown reasons, the publication notes.

In February 2019, a message appeared on the official website of Lokomotiv that Babayan had been appointed advisor to the president of the club Mansur Rajapov. On the same day, the coach told Kun.uz that his life-long disqualification was canceled after two weeks. For a year, this fact was held back by football functionaries.

According to the Uzbekistan Football Association (UFA), after leaving the national team, more than 10,000 letters were received in the virtual office of the President of Uzbekistan with complaints about Samvel Babayan. On January 15, 2018, the bureau of the UFA Executive Committee decided to remove the specialist from football.

In the course of studying this case, it was established that “Samvel Babayan used the Uzbekistan national team at his personal interests. For this reason, it was already possible to close the doors of the national team for him forever. However, later, the FC Bunyodkor turned to the UFA Executive Committee with a request to remove the disqualification from the former coach of the Uzbekistan national team under the personal guarantee of the club,” the UFA statement emphasized.