Porterfield is Scottish by nationality and was born in the city of Danfermlayn, Scotland in 1946. Since 1964, Porterfield has coached the “Rate Rovers”, “Sanderland” and “Schefield Uensdei” teams. He started his coaching career at “Schefield Uensdei” and was a player/coach for the team from 1988-1979. Porterfield has headed the Scottish “Aberdin” soccer team from 1986-1988 and has helped the team make it to the ‘86-87 quarter finals for the Championship. Afterwards, he continued his career at “Chelsea” until 1993. The team became the winner of the first division thanks to his coaching.
In 1993, he coached the Zambia soccer team and made it to the African soccer championship finals, but the team lost to Nigeria. Afterwards, Porterfield coached Zimbabwe, Oman/Trinidad and Tobago. In 1995-1996 he was assistant to the chief coach of the English “Bolton” team. The last soccer team that Porterfield coached was the Southern-Korean “Busan” team, where he worked since 2002. He left the team in April 2006. As Ruben Hayrapetyan said, the federation picked Porterfield as the best candidate out of all the ten candidates.
In response to the question as to how the new coach will help the Armenian soccer team, Ruben Hayrapetyan said: “I want to instill a new spirit in the team and give everyone the opportunity to express themselves.” The Scottish coach is optimistic. “I see a future for Armenian soccer and Armenian players have a lot of potential,” he says, but (no matter how strange it sounds) adds that he hasn’t seen one game in the past couple of years.
The Europe-2008 soccer championship meetings are coming up. On September 6, the Armenian team will compete with the Belgian team. Will the coach make it in time to meet the players, choose and prepare the chosen players for the game?
“There’s not enough time to prepare for the first game. In general, there is never enough time in football,” says Porterfield and hopes that the Armenian soccer team will be able to prepare and play well.
Yan Porterfield will also coach the other teams, besides the national one. However, he isn’t going to coach “Pyunik”. In contrast to the previous coaches, Porterfield will stay in Armenia with his family and his term ends by the end of 2007. It is worth mentioning that Porterfield is the fifth foreign coach invited to coach the Armenian soccer team. Until now the coaches have been from Argentina, Rumania, France and Holland. However, the Armenian national soccer team hasn’t played well. Let’s hope that Porterfield will do a good job and we won’t regret choosing him. “168 Hours” congratulates the new soccer coach and hopes that Armenians will get a chance to see the team succeed.