APOEL’s Champions League home form gives them reason to believe they can overturn Lyon’s slender but significant advantage in the second leg of their last 16 tie, according to their Brazilian defender William Boaventura.
They may have earned a reputation this season for pulling off shock results in qualifying top from a group containing the moneyed trio of Porto, Zenit St Petersburg and Shakhtar Donetsk, but following Lyon’s 1-0 victory at a bitterly cold Stade Gerland on Tuesday night, APOEL will have to outdo themselves if they are to remain in the Champions League.
The Cypriot minnows and surprise package of the competition recognise the magnitude of the task at hand, but Boaventura’s post-match comments show no sign of a dip in the belief that has been a characteristic of the APOEL camp as they have hugely exceeded expectations to come this far already.
“It will be a different story in Nicosia. It would be a disaster for them to lose, but we’re not going to give the victory to them without a fight,” he told uefa.com.
“We always tend to struggle away then we win at home. We will need to play better, try to play our own game, but I really believe we can turn this tie around at home,” Boaventura added.
APOEL’s home record in the group stages does provide them with plenty of optimism, having recorded two victories and one defeat, a loss to Shakhtar in a game where qualification from the group had already been secured. Worryingly however, in both games they won, APOEL also conceded. Should Lyon find the net in Nicosia, APOEL will need to score three to qualify, a seemingly monumental task.
Lyon ran out deserved winners on Tuesday and the post-game statistics said it all when it came to the dominance that they had exerted over APOEL, who are the first Cypriot club to play in the knockout phase of the continent’s premier club competition.
The vastly more experienced French outfit, participating in the last 16 for the ninth consecutive time, enjoyed 63 per cent of possession and had a total of 15 attempts on goal – compared to APOEL’S single effort on goal, which came two minutes from time.
The home side could have doubled their lead on 66 minutes after Ederson’s header went agonisingly wide and boss Remi Garde was left hoping that his side will not rue their missed chances.
“The game went as we expected. We tried to dictate the pace and tried to ensure we didn’t concede an away goal. We would have liked to score more goals – hopefully we won’t regret that in the second leg,” he said.
The city of Lyon was host to some 4,500 travelling Cypriot fans, who made their presence felt with their vocal support throughout the game. More of the same is expected in Nicosia on March 7 for the return leg at the GSP Stadium, with more than 20,000 tickets already snapped up.
While coach Ivan Jovanovic admitted that Lyon “deserved to win” and that they now held an “important advantage” going into the second game, the APOEL players were keen to make it known that they have not given up just yet.
“We may have lost but we have the return game to look forward to. Nothing is over yet,” forward Ivan Trickovski said.
