Football head in hot water after trip north

By Constantinos Psillides
HEAD of the Cyprus Football Association (CFA) Costakis Koutsokoumnis found himself in hot water on Tuesday following a visit to the occupied north, where he awarded the championship trophy to the winning team.
While Koutsokoumnis’ visit was not a secret, reactions raged after a picture of him smiling was tweeted by Deniz Birinci, the International Relations Coordinator of “Cyprus Turkish Football Association” (KTTF).
The picture went viral and garnered a lot of negative response from sports websites, since Koutsokoumnis wasn’t present on Saturday May 31 to award the championship to APOEL.
“I don’t know who’s Koutsokoumnis’ personal secretary but I fear for her position, since that little Turkish girl Deniz Birinci might be Koutsokoumnis’ new secretary,” read an anonymous report by Super Sport FM, attaching the picture in question.
At first Birinci responded to the news report in jest, saying she was way too qualified to be working as a personal secretary but she might considerer Secretary of State.
She had to follow up with a more serious response though, when the criticism started piling up. Birinci’s second response followed a comment made Marios Charalambous, deputy head of football club Digenis Morfou.
“The man is simply unbelievable. In two years he hasn’t given us a single cent. We are struggling to get by and all he cares about is going to the north and having a good time with his little Turkish girlfriends,” Charalambous reportedly said, prompting an immediate reaction by Birinci.
“We need the culture of peace not the culture of hatred on this island. I have nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Koutsokoumnis on a personal level. We are cooperating with KOP in order to reunify Cypriot football and he is the President of KOP. If you will elect someone else as the President of KOP tomorrow, we will continue to have professional relations with him (or HER! :)). Therefore please do not make the mistake of confusing apples with oranges. We struggle for the reunification of our island and football is a part of the big picture,” said Birinci, adding that if Charalambous knew her on a personal level he wouldn’t have made that comment.
Following criticism by sports websites, fan clubs from five different clubs issued a joint statement condemning Koutsokoumnis for his action and demanding that he resign. Fans from APOEL, Anorthosi, AEK, Olympiakos and Paralimni-based ENP promised they would organise marches against Koutsokoumnis.
Football clubs, Koutsokoumnis and the CFA have not yet officially responded to the criticism.
CFA’s association with KTTF is not something new. The two football federations have been in talks for years to find a way to unite. In November 2013 they signed an initial agreement in Zurich.
The landmark agreement would see the KTTF become a member of the CFA as an association in accordance with CFA rules.
Both parties agreed on the setting up of a steering committee to work towards implementing the agreement.
The agreement also had the full support of President Nicos Anastasiades, who had said in a November statement that the agreement was “a positive outcome that gave hope for the future”.
Birinci and Koutsokoumnis found themselves in the spotlight recently but for completely different reasons. Koutsokoumnis was blamed by both the teams and fans of APOEL and AEL for last week’s CFA decision to repeat a championship game between the two. The initial game was interrupted when an AEL fan threw a fire cracker at the APOEL bench injuring a player.
Birinci, on the other hand, was an MEP candidate with the first bicommunal party Drasis/Eylem which resorted to the authorities after a mix-up by the Interior Ministry left several thousands of Turkish Cypriots unable to vote.
Birinci protested fervently, prompting a response by Interior Minister Socratis Hasikos saying that “everything was done by the book”.

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.