Omonia capture their 13th Cup title

Omonia topped Apollon Limassol 4-3 after a penalty shoot-out in the 69th national football cup final yesterday evening at Larnaca’s GSZ Stadium. The score at the end of regulation was 1-1.

Apollon fans started filling up designated stands more than an hour before the kick-off and police were forced to intervene in order to prevent early crowd trouble, resulting in at least five of the Limassol team’s supporters being detained. Meanwhile, organising officials were not able to identify an alleged 1,200 fake tickets so the stadium was over full capacity.

Omonia took the lead after 13 minutes when Michalis Konstantinou met a great cross by Andreas Avraam in the middle of the penalty area and headed the ball home past Apollon’s Czech goalkeeper Ales Chvalovsky.

Apollon levelled the score five minutes from time after Omonia captain Elias Charalambous deflected the ball into his own team’s net after a shot by Moustapha Bangura.

There was no winner after extra time so a penalty shoot-out had to decide the cup champions.

Serbian striker Miljan Mrdakovic took the first shot of the series and sent Antonis Georgallides in the wrong direction, providing Apollon with a 1-0 lead.

Konstantinou then hit the bottom right corner of Chvalovsky’s goal to level the shoot-out. Bangura was up next and his penalty kick was identical to Konstantinou’s, while Georgios Efrem also calmly slotted the ball home to make it 2-2. Georgallides caught a poor shot by Andreas Stavrou in the following series and Jose Manuel Rueda scored to make it 3-2 for Omonia.

The following two penalty takers converted their shots and then the Cypriot national team goalkeeper saved Antonio Nunez’s fifth series shot to set up the final score and furnish his team with their 13th national cup trophy.

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.