When I was six years old, my parents told me that we were moving back home to Armenia. I didn't really understand what was happening. My father had stopped playing football, and he was at home all the time.

The year after my father died, I started football training. He was the drive for me; he was my idol. I said to myself, 'I have to run just like him. I have to shoot just like him.'

I didn't know it, but my father had a brain tumour. Everything happened very fast. Within a year, he was gone. Because I was so young, I didn't completely understand the concept of death.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan Quotes