It's Been An Ugly Season And Apollon Limassol Don't Deserve To Win It

It’s been an ugly season. A league that has never been famous for its elegance and overall quality has found it in itself to manifest scenes even uglier than usual this year. And as unsightly as the league has been I can still muster up no courage to craft a case for Apollon Limassol winning it.

If your first thought in reaction to my statement involves the phrase “but no other club has been perfect either” you’re missing the point. A team aspiring to become champions should care little for the merits of its competitors. Not to mention that there’s a difference between perfect and worthy. Perfection is nigh on impossible. A consistently high level of performance is not, however,  and that is the standard a championship-chasing team should aspire to. Even the most ardent Apollon fan would find it difficult to claim that the Limassol club have done that.

Image rights: www.omonoia.com.cy

Ugly Season

I’m not hasty in my declaration that this season has not been too enjoyable for any particular set of fans. It’s not my aim to discredit the eventual champions. However, one must admit that this season has been as tasty as stale chicken soup left in the Arizona sun for the flies to feast upon.

Where does one begin? The quality of play has ranged from intermittently deliberate to amateurishly haphazard. Apollon perfectly encapsulate that with two games in particular posing themselves as perfect examples: The win over Anorthosis Famagusta at home in February being the former and the game against Omonoia Nicosia yesterday being the latter.

A quick look at the table is all you need to know about the average level of performance this season. Current leaders Apollon (Apoel can leapfrog them if they win against Ermis today) have scored 53 goals in 27 games, a league high, but have conceded a whopping 33 goals. By comparison, they conceded a paltry 19 goals in the regular season last year and an extra 10 during the playoffs for a total of 29. With 5 games to go, there’s nothing to suggest they won’t far exceed that. Meanwhile, Apoel have let in a much more respectable 17 goals this season, but have a scored just 38 goals themselves. They scored a massive 78 goals last season (playoffs included) and conceded just 25. Omonoia have scored one more than Apoel but have let in even more goals than their Nicosia counterparts.

As for the other reasons the league has been distinctly joyless this season, I’ll keep it brief because it isn’t my desire to depress you. Let’s start with the undying and thoroughly justified rumours of match-fixing. Frankly, the situation is getting out of hand. Corruption in Cyprus is an undeniable part of everyday life, but I think these few years, along with the coming one, are the tipping point. Even the prominent and influential New York Times saw it fit to cover the mess that is Cypriot football.

The bombs, threats, UEFA-sourced red flags, corruption and various other bits of nastiness are not alien to Cypriots, but I think there’s one differentiating factor that worsens things even further: the nonchalant fashion in which Marios Panayi’s accusations were swept to the side. For the first time, someone with clandestine knowledge pertaining to football in Cyprus decided to risk their livelihood and, if we’re being honest, well-being, and the authorities raised a single eyebrow and scoffed a sickly ‘we don’t give a toss’ at his and the public’s general direction. Panayi’s motives are wholly irrelevant. We all know that what he said was at the very least adequately factual. The CFA and Mr. Koutsokoumnis will point to Apoel and Apollon’s European endeavours as the sole indicators of Cypriot football’s quality and health. To allow him that would be detrimental and offensive to both the sport and common sense. The CFA’s one (potential) success is entirely political, but we’ll leave that topic for another day.

Furthemore, we’ve seen TV rights segregated and sold to different platforms all to the burden of the average football fan. It costs way too much for someone to have the privilege of watching this congregation of agent-shaped squads battle it out in dated stadia against a background of cynicism-fuelling din of rumours and leaks.

The CFA has dished out bans and fines in a scattergun approach that’s done little to keep hooligans away. It’s only helped to keep more people away from attending their club’s game. As for the ill-fated (one hopes this will not change) attempts of Mr. Ionas Nicolaou to impose slipshod measures that are supposedly aimed at curtailing violence, I have way too little bile and time to cover those properly. May they come up for discussion again.

Finally, the CFA went against both reason and public sentiment and refused to lower the number of teams participating in the league and alter its overall structure. They’re quite similar to FIFA in that regard.

Image rights: www.cfa.com.cy

Contempt for continuity

Here’s my reductive but probably accurate one-liner for the week: any team that’s had 3 different managers before the season’s over does not deserve to win the league. There it is. Does it really need further analysis?

I recently wrote to a friend that stability and continuity are as cherished here as kindness and humanity are in a Katie Hopkins column. I stand by that statement. There’s no need to look up who’s the longest serving manager in the league. At best it’ll be two years. Apollon and Apoel, the league’s two frontrunners, have had their current managers for a couple of weeks and four months respectively. Just think about that.

Regarding Apollon, in terms of vision and transfers, there’s no real evidence that there’s been a cohesive plan about the whole thing. Apollon had a decent squad last season. They finished third and needed a few additions that would both elevate the squad’s quality and help the current members up their level of performance. Instead, players have come and gone in numbers so large it’s baffling.

Not only that, but it seems the club has also served as a vessel for agents. Christos Intzidis  and Doneil Henry were both ‘funnelled’ through the club in shady fashion. Apollon is hardly alone in doing this in Cyprus. Let’s not forget that Doxa Katokopias are run by an agent, Costas Karavidas. Supposedly he’s not acting in that role whilst running the club, but we all know what’s happening here.

The best of a bad bunch

Apoel are probably favourites to win the league and are most likely capable of doing it. As I said earlier, it is not my intent to discredit the eventual champions, but whichever club manages to plod ahead in the least dire manner will be crowned league winners. That’s hardly an endorsement. Apollon can look at their game against Omonoia yesterday as proof of why they shouldn’t feel wronged if they miss out. It was a season low, despite the mitigating circumstances. 4 points in 5 games during the playoffs leave little room for misinterpretation. Worthy of the league? I’m sorry, but they’re far from it.  

Kyriacos Nicolaou

The Ignored Value and Ill-treatment of Backroom Staff

You cannot guarantee absolute success when dealing within a law-reigned environment. Even in unlawful settings the word guarantee is as hollow as the moral values of the participants. This applies both in business and in sport. You can, however, legitimately assure that you’re in contention to compete for it, which may also result in partially attaining it.

It was my intention to write a lengthier, more detailed piece about how this relates to football, but I’ll keep it fairly short - for now.

Simply put, the ceaseless acquisition of talent is not a sustainable method of achieving success in the vast majority of leagues and especially in Cyprus. There’s a large number of factors why this is the case, the most obvious being that revenue is insufficient to fund such a high turnover of personnel. Another factor is that constantly laying people off through early contract terminations results in the accumulation of debt and most damningly of all fosters an environment of instability and uncertainty. Confidence suffers, performances suffer.

I could go on about the effects of this type of club management, but I’ll restrict myself to a painfully elementary comment about Cypriot clubs and their backroom staff. Simply put, pay your f*cking employees.

Recently, we’ve seen Apoel Nicosia and Apollon Limassol exchange officiating-related barbs through club statements, press releases and social media accounts. Regardless of the quality of refereeing, which was admittedly lacklustre in two or three incidents, it’s a fairly classless way to conduct yourself as a club. One could argue that they’re a pretty accurate reflection of Cypriot society in general, but let’s exercise our deliciously stubborn right to not swandive into that ever-beckoning rabbithole.

Image rights: www.apollon.com.cy

Returning to my main point, it was recently announced that both clubs would be penalised by the Cypriot FA and are now subject to fines which must be paid within seven days of them being officially handed out. All nice and well, but one thing has escaped the media’s attention and not for the first time. Clubs casually take decisions which hinder them financially. Sometimes greatly, but more often than not the sums are relatively negligible in the wider context. Well, except if you’re a physio who’s owed three months in wages and your bank seems to have your phone on speed dial.

This is regretfully far from uncommon. Clubs, and the great majority of fans, perceive football to be all about the players. Although the game would not exist without its much recognized protagonists, it also needs its core structure of coaches, doctors, assistants and every other person who helps a team to function properly. The fact that they’re so underappreciated and undervalued reflects very poorly on both the owners’ management skills and the fans’ understanding of how the game works off the pitch.

There’s no need to go on about this any further. Pay your employees and understand that clubs are not charities. Players aren’t there to donate their time and bodies to a club’s cause and neither are the backroom staff. They have families that depend on them, goals that require money to be realized and lives outside of the game. Their marginalization within a club’s structure is a disgrace.

Kyriacos Nicolaou

Apollon can only blame themselves, but Tratos' performance did little to dispel prejudices

In previous posts I’ve written how even an out-of-form Morais is still a non-negligible asset for Apoel. Today he only reinforced that notion with the most tangible contribution possible: a goal in the dying moments against a rival.

It wasn’t a game the neutral will have savoured a great deal. Apoel were to initially play behind closed doors, but that was altered so that retirees, women and children could attend the game. The atmosphere was tepid at best.

Apollon don’t traditionally do well against Apoel in Nicosia. Today appeared to be different. After a somewhat lukewarm first few minutes, Apollon grew into the game and began threatening Apoel by what was a predictable initial approach. They patiently stood off in their own half, absorbed whatever pressure Apoel applied and broke off on counter attacks as quickly as they could muster, often through direct balls to Guie, who was positioned primarily in the middle, or Fotis Papoulis and Thuram on the wings.

During that first twenty minute spell, Apoel captain Constantinos Charalambides attempted to push forward down the right wing but often found himself in a dead end. He was obviously given the freedom to roam towards the center, an area where his through balls for Djebbour had the potential to hurt Apollon, but that didn’t work all too well for him today. Similarly, attacking midfielder De Vincenti didn’t find much joy in his final pass despite him having one of the best chances to score. Unfortunately for him his seemingly simple finish met a good block and the ball was subsequently deflected out for a corner. Both of Apoel’s full-backs, Riice and Mario Sergio, also had chances to open the score but in both occasions their powerful shots fizzed over the bar.

It was Apollon who would have the better and more numerous chances to score, however, and Guie would be at the forefront in most of them. Guie is currently one of Apollon’s most in-form players but you would not have guessed it if today’s game was your first one seeing the Ivorian forward play. It was fairly obvious that Apoel’s center back Kaka had clear instructions to stick tight to Guie, hassle him, disrupt his play and most importantly not let him turn towards the goal with any sort of freedom to run into space. It worked for the first 15 minutes or so but then Apollon varied their offensive play a little by not playing the ball to Guie’s feet all the time and either used their two widemen as offensive outlets or played the ball into space for Guie to latch on to. It worked as Guie had an opportunity to score when he was released down the right by Thuram but his shot was blocked away by Pardo. The oncoming Papoulis was quickly closed down but should have done better with the regained possession regardless.

In terms of midfield performances, many expected Rosa to shine, but he was a tad too cautious and unwilling to be more direct with his passes at times. Next to him in the middle, and though he’s been much maligned this season, Camel Meriem had one of his better games for the blues. His passing was generally accurate, he tackled well when he had to (especially in the first half) and did not shy away from bringing the ball out of his own half even when the midfield area was notably congested.

GSP Stadium. Image source: www.gsp.org.cy

Apoel had a significantly better time in keeping possession in the second half. Apollon sat a bit deeper again and invited pressure with their opponents more than happy to oblige. This spell of domination yielded two decent moments for Apoel, one being an Efrem header (off target) and the other a hard, straight shot by De Vincenti which was saved by Vale.

While Apoel appeared to be in complete control and were poised to become even more threatening in the offensive third, the first of the game’s three most noteworthy events took place. In the 71st minute, Apollon’s Guie was released into space with only the keeper to face but was pulled down by Kaka from behind. It was an unambiguously straight red for the Brazilian center back. Thorsten Fink responded immediately by taking Charalambides off for a replacement center back, Carlao.

Apollon quickly utilized their numerical advantage by playing a bit further up the pitch knowing that Apoel were now both lighter in midfield and cautious when breaking in a counter attack. Only 7 minutes after the red card, the second most critical event materialized. A speculative forward pass was ill-judged by the Apoel center backs causing them to sort of clash onto each other. Papoulis showed good anticipation to follow the ball and was duly rewarded by finding himself free in the box with the ball in possession, unchallenged and with only Urko Pardo to deal with. For some inexplicable reason Leontios Tratos decided to blow the whistle for what I can only guess is an inexistent foul by Papoulis who was a metre away from the nearest Apoel player. Papoulis’ facial expression was that of unadulterated frustration and bewilderment. Many fans speak of how hard it is to get decisions to go your way at GSP. Though exaggeration and delusion are no strangers to the soured football fan walking away from a loss, Tratos did absolutely nothing to dispel any prejudices today.

Apollon continued to threaten Apoel but Guie’s profligacy lingered and would come back to haunt them. The game began to lose momentum in the dying moments, players and fans alike accepting the possibility of a draw, but Apollon’s loss of concentration would make all those missed opportunities a bit more difficult to swallow. After Tiago Gomes came on for the largely ineffective Giorgos Efrem and with mere seconds to go for the added time to meet its minimum amount, Apoel scored. Merkis’ professional foul during an Apoel counter made it seem that Apollon would regroup and see the game out, content with the draw and the subsequent point advantage remaining intact. However, Apoel took the foul quickly, passing to Djebbour down the left. He carried the ball forward and crossed while near the byline with right back Nuno Lopes offering little in terms of defensive cover. The remarkably unmarked Nuno Morais comfortably headed the ball in the net utterly demoralizing the Limassol club.

Ioan Andone will undoubtedly be feeling aggrieved after today. Not only did his team come close to winning away against a fierce rival, but they also showed confidence and initiative. Having said that, the performance counts for little when you lose in such fashion. Apollon need to use today as both a springboard to challenge for the title and as a lesson which should be used in future encounters.

The game is not over until the final whistle is blown; Apoel are evidently adequately aware of this. The referee’s sizable blunder earlier in the game may provide some semblance of moral superiority, but that does not affect the scoreboard in any way. Kolokoudias was Andone’s only introduction today but he offered little going forward. Perhaps the Romanian manager didn’t make any other changes so as to not disrupt his team, but in hindsight he could have altered things a little after the red card to solidify his team’s superiority by flooding the midfield or by bringing on some fresh legs. It was jokingly said that Sangoy’s lengthy ban would only help the team play better. After today I’m not quite as certain that is a valid notion. Apollon are a bit more functional, and Sangoy does tend to fade in certain games, but his attacking contribution was sorely missed in a game such as this one. If Apollon are serious about their title challenge they must bow down to the inescapable necessity of being ferociously decisive in front of goal.

Kyriacos Nicolaou