Nikita or Mkrtich Simonyan played soccer at a time when the sport was still relatively new in the Soviet Union. His father, Poghos Simonyan, was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.
In 1945, Simonyan’s local squad earned two consecutive victories against one of Moscow’s main teams, Wings of the Soviets, and Simonyan scored in both matches. These wins changed his life. One of the two coaches of the Wings, Abraham Dangulov, was a Russian Armenian and took notice. In 1946, Simonian was invited to Moscow. He attended school there and lived with the Wings’ second coach, Vladimir Gorokhov. When Dangulov and Gorokhov later moved to the legendary Spartak [Spartacus] club, Simonian followed. In his first year with Spartak, he scored an impressive 26 goals.
In 1951, Simonyan received an unexpected summons from Vasiliy Stalin, the son of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Vasiliy, a two-star aviation general and supervisor of the Soviet Air Force soccer team, sent a special military plane to bring Simonyan from his vacation in the south. In the meeting, he demanded that Simonyan leave Spartak and join VVS, the Red Aviation team. After a moment of thought, Simonian refused — an extraordinary act of courage at the time.
Simonyan went on to score 160 goals for Spartak, setting a record that no player has surpassed. In 1954, he made his debut for the USSR national team, scoring twice against Sweden. He retired as a player in 1959 and immediately transitioned into coaching at Spartak.
Meanwhile, Abraham Dangulov had moved to Yerevan to coach the Armenian national squad. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ararat Yerevan had become one of the strongest teams in the Soviet Union, yet a championship title still eluded them. Even though Ararat placed second in 1971 and fourth in 1972, the ultimate victory remained out of reach. It was then that Soviet Armenia’s leadership invited Simonyan to take charge.
