Bentonit Ijevan

Bentonit's cup fixtures in recent seasons say plainly where the club now sits: a 0-7 defeat to Lernayin Artsakh in 2024, a 0-3 loss to Andranik in 2025, both against sides from the top flight.

The team took its name from the bentonite plant in Ijevan. When the factory went under, so did the football club: in 2007, Bentonit withdrew from the competition and its results for that season were struck from the record. The same year it had gone further than usual in the Armenian Cup, reaching the quarter-final before the collapse.

Ijevan waited twelve years for the club to come back. It returned in 2019, worked its way through the Amateur A-League — finishing second in Group B in the 2023/24 season — and earned its way back into the First League for 2024/25, where it finished tenth.

The one name from Bentonit's history that travelled beyond Ijevan is Garnik Avalyan, a forward who started out at the club in the early 1980s while it still played at amateur level, before moving on to Russian football with Krylia Sovetov, Shinnik and others, and earning seven caps and two goals for Armenia in 1997 and 1998.

Home games are played at the Arnar stadium in Ijevan, which holds 3,000. The club has never won a major trophy at senior level. It has also played, at different points, under other names — Kayen, BMA — before the bentonite plant gave it the one that stuck, back in 1977.