APOEL land Morais from Chelsea

CYPRIOT Champions APOEL yesterday announced the signing of versatile Portuguese defender Nuno Morais from Premiership club Chelsea for an undisclosed fee.

As reported by the Cyprus Mail yesterday, APOEL had made the 23-year-old Portuguese youngster their main summer transfer target.

The signing represents a major transfer coup for APOEL, as the player had been highly rated by Blues boss Jose Mourinho.

The self-proclaimed ‘special one’ signed the player from Portuguese Second Division club FA Penafiel in August 2004 during his first season in charge of the London club.

During his time at Chelsea, Morais failed to establish himself in the Blues multi-million pound first team and spent the 2005/2006 season on loan at Maritimo.

The central defender, who can also play in midfield, made his Chelsea debut two years ago, playing the full 90 minutes in the FA Cup clash with Scunthorpe, but since then he has been restricted to a cup outings and substitute appearances.

Morais, who has been capped for Portugal’s under-21 side, made his last appearance for Chelsea as an 88th-minute substitute in the goalless draw with Manchester United on Wednesday 9 May.
He becomes the first player to join the reigning champions ahead of next season, while the club’s chairman Kyriacos Zivanaris has promised to add a number of top players to enhance their title-winning squad in a bid to make a historic attempt to qualify for the group stages of the Champions League.

An announcement on APOEL’s website yesterday said that Morais has signed a two-year contract with the champions.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.