Our Story – PAYFA

About Us: Our Story

How it all started

The Pan-Armenian Football Association (PAYFA) was founded

The Pan-Armenian Football Association (PAYFA) was founded in Southern California by Armenian Americans who wanted to couple their obligation to their homeland of Armenia with their passion for football, commonly referred to as the ‘Beautiful Game”.

The cornerstone of PAYFA’s role is to encourage and facilitate youth players of Armenian descent to pursue their dreams of futbol as a potential professional career or playing the game at the collegiate level. With this goal in mind, we will be using as many of our personal and community resources to identify a global network of talented Armenian youth players.

Why it all started

Our Mission

One of the key components of our mission is help identify elite Armenian youth players throughout the diaspora and introduce them to the Football Federation of Armenia (FFA). This unique opportunity may potentially invite some of these high caliber players to play international football for Armenian Youth National Teams. We have been fortunate enough to form an official partnership with the FFA to help discover, assess, and advance these players from around the globe into the network of the FFA.

We feel that the pathway to identify and develop US- based Armenian players for the FFA will not only be a tremendous opportunity for the youth players but will benefit the FFA and the local football academies that are involved in training and development of these players.

What opportunities we offer

What do the players get

The benefits to the selected players are many:

development as a player able to compete with the best players in one’s age group,
opportunity to add international travel and competition at the highest level,
exposure to the best football clubs throughout the world and professional scouts,
opportunity to represent Armenia,
and last but not least exposure to the top college recruits.

Ultimately with the success of this program, we would like to replicate this model for Armenian player recruitment on other countries. PAYFA is a 501(3)c non-profit organization and all donations to carry out our mission are encouraged and appreciated.