‘Our football is slowly dying’
The Cyprus Football Association (CFA) and the island’s football clubs on Friday insisted they are on the right track with regards to the policies they have undertaken to ensure the safety of fans and others at football matches.
Following a meeting, CFA chairman Giorgos Koumas said the association and the clubs had agreed that away fans would continue to be able to attend football matches, that “severe penalties” would be incurred by clubs responsible for violent incidents, and that they would “find a way to cooperate with the state” to tackle the problem at large.
Koumas said the framework of the decisions taken at the meeting had “extended a hand of cooperation to the state” to be able to “find the right solutions which will not lead to the death of Cypriot football”.
With this in mind, he said the decision to ban all away fans from all football matches last season was “a measure which succeeded”, but that this year, it had been decided that a cap of 800 away fans, or 10 per cent of the stadium’s full capacity, whichever is smaller, at any given football match would be implemented instead.
He added that the CFA had “changed its disciplinary regulations” and “imposed very harsh … punishments” prior to the start of the season.
This has seemingly been done with the aim of proving that Cypriot football is able to regulate itself, with Koumas saying that “our position is that football cannot be punished, those who deviate [from the rules] will be punished, and our own disciplinary processes exist”.
To this end, he “sent a message” to Justice Minister Marios Hartsiotis, saying, “we are here to cooperate, we are here to jointly solve the problems.”
Those problems, he said, “are not solved by either side making interventions, but in closed rooms, exchanging opinions, without either side extorting the other, so that solutions can be found.”
He then said a meeting will soon be held between a delegation from the CFA and the island’s football clubs and Hartsiotis, police chief Stylianos Papatheodorou, and President Nikos Christodoulides, adding that Christodoulides “is a sports fan and knows football’s problems”.
“We believe that we will find the right solutions so that our football does not die. The avoidance of incidents concerns us all, and we do not want to have any more victims, be they police or fans. This is our main goal,” he said.
He added that his “secondary goal” is to “keep football alive”.
“Our football is slowly dying but is not doing so in terms of its competitivity, since the level of our league is recognised across Europe, and everyone should be happy with this league,” he said.
He then said he wished to “extend a hand of friendship” to Hartsiotis and to the state to “find the right solutions”, adding that, “if everyone sits around the same table, solutions will be found which are right for both society and football.”
