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Daily Record
Daily Record
Sport
Ross Pilcher

Joaquin Caparros blasts 'barbaric' Armenia Nations League schedule ahead of Scotland showdown

Joaquin Caparros has blasted the “barbaric” schedule Armenia face in their quest for Nations League success.

The Spaniard spoke out ahead of his team’s trip to Hampden on Wednesday, which comes in the midst of four-games in ten days, including two meetings with Scotland.

Armenia stunned Ireland at the weekend with a 1-0 victory, which came as a welcome boost following a 9-0 defeat to Norway in March.

Caparros’ men now face Steve Clarke’ s Scots home and away, either side of a meeting with Ukraine in Poland on Saturday.

And the former Sevilla and Villarreal boss is concerned his players won’t have recovered properly by the time they play another 90 minutes in Glasgow.

“Playing four matches in ten days is barbaric,” said Caparros. “We must try to recover from the Ireland game and then travel to Scotland.

“The problem is with the players’ recovery process, as we are the team that must be 100 per cent committed.

“We will use all of the available means to rehabilitate the players in time for Wednesday.

“But there will be rotation in my team — I need to think of the condition of the squad.”

Armenia go to Hampden as the leaders of Group 1 in League B after shocking Steven Kenny’s team.

Scotland are still smarting from their World Cup play-off semi-final defeat to Ukraine and will want to get that result out of the system with a convincing victory over the Armenians.

The visitors are very much on a high this week however, as Caparros put the victory over the Irish into context.

He added: “It was easy for the players to feel down mentally after the Norway game.

“But the boys have good character and they proved it.

“It’s one of the greatest victories of the Armenian football team because Ireland is a very good team.”

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