Sunday’s football match between Omonia 29M and Apoel will take place without away fans, the Cyprus Football Association (CFA) announced on Tuesday.
The CFA said the decision had been made after police chief Stylianos Papatheodorou sent them a letter warning of a planned protest outside the Glafcos Clerides Stadium in Peristerona, where Omonia 29M play their home games, against the fan card.
He said he had received information regarding “the presence of organised Apoel fans at the match due to the stadium’s location and the surrounding area’s peculiarity”.
As such, the association decided the game would be played without away fans, and that only a “limited number” of home fans would be able to attend.
Apoel said the club will respect the decision “for the first and last time”, and that it disagrees with the premise.
It referred to the violent scenes among fans which saw the Limassol derby between Ael and Apollon called off on September 15, saying, “the people of Apoel are not to blame for what took place in Limassol.”
Nor are they to blame, they said, “for the ridiculous events, the plans to prevent them which were not implemented, and the frankly amusing acts which followed, and which we had never seen before, and for which no one has taken any responsibility so far.
“In the year 2024, instead of moving forward and offering safe access to everyone to go and watch a football match, we are reaching the point where we are being forced into matches without fans because the state’s authorities cannot implement the obvious, and Apoel is the first collateral of this,” the club added.
“We will respect this decision for the first and last time, characterising it as a one-off exemption, hoping that for our coming league fixtures, neither we nor any other team will be deprived of our fans at an away match.”
Sunday’s fixture will be the first ever meeting between Omonia 29M and Apoel, with the former having been founded in 2018 in protest at the original Omonia’s ownership.
Since then, they have worked their way up Cyprus’ football pyramid, winning promotion to the top flight for the first time last season.
Football fan violence has been a hot topic in Cyprus throughout the year, with away fans having initially been banned from all competitive football matches in January after a firecracker launched from a standhit a player in the head during a Coca Cola Cup match between Nea Salamina and Apoel.
After the events in Limassol on September 15, Justice Minister Marios Hartsiotis called on football clubs to isolate what he referred to as “100, 500 or even 1,000 mindless thugs”.
He also criticised the CFA for not “taking further action” in advance of the fixture.
