"These games are not easy for a small country like Cyprus..."

The title of this article is a quote from the current Cyprus national head coach (as of writing this, anyway) about the capabilities of the national team vs the footballing giants that are … Spain? Norway? Scotland?

Of course not.

This was a comparison between Cyprus and Georgia. Temeuri Ketsbaia obviously thinks highly of his home nation, but calling Cyprus, a small nation compared to Georgia, is, with all respect, a giant pile of garbage. Georgia currently has players plying their trade in Serie A, the Eredivisie, the Primera Liga, Ligue 2, the Austrian Bundesliga and more. But on the opposite side, Cyprus has players playing in Serie A, the Primera Liga, the Swiss Super League, the Greek Super League, the Jupiler Pro League, MLS, the Scottish Premiership and more.

Has Cyprus always been a “small country”?

*Ah, yes. Rhetorical Questions. The best questions.*

I have had a look at the results of the national team over time with the head coaches that have been in charge for ten or more matches. The conclusions of the research are definately worth looking at. Go ahead, scroll to the bottom. There’s a graph.

….

Did you see it? Amazing, right?

Argyrios Gavalas (1960-1967)

Let’s start with the head coach that started it all. With the declaration of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960, naturally, one of the first things that came forward from that, was the creation of the National Football Team.

The Greek head coach’s other job listed anywhere is his management of Apollon Limassol between the 1956/57 and 1961/62 seasons. Their best finished position was 6th at that point. Nevertheless, he was chosen as the historic first national team head coach.

His record over 7 years is not too bad considering the team was just being started, and included within his tenure, there was also a political event which shook the fledgling country to its core, even before the military coup and the Turkish invasion and subsequent occupation.

The first game for the national team was a First Round World Cup Qualification match in the Asian region against Israel which finished in a 1-1 draw. They then went on to lose the return leg in Israel 6-1.

The form under Gavalas was a disaster defensively.

The team won 2, drew 1 and lost 10 times, conceding 51 goals and scoring 8. In that time, the team played Germany, Italy, Sweden and Romania twice as well as Switzerland. There's a World Cup finalist (at the time) in that list. Germany in 1966. Italy had won the European Championships in 1968.

And the wins? Greece and Lebanon.

It took 7 years for Cyprus to play their first 13 games. It took two to play the next 14.

Avraamidis' 14 games read off very simply. 2 wins and 12 losses. A quarter of those losses were vs Bulgaria. He also recorded two losses to each of England, Portugal, Greece and losses to Czechoslovakia and Northern Ireland.

The wins? Greece and Northern Ireland. Yep, another win vs Greece.

In Avraamidis' tenure the team conceded 33 goals but only scored 5. Defensively the team got better, but struggled in front of goal. Avraamidis was back as head coach but didn't get to the 10 match cut-off.

Kostas Talianos (1978-82, Second Time)

Talianos' stint in charge was also a bit of a disaster, with only one win in 19 games, which was against Syria in a friendly. There were also 3 draws with Greece, Romania and Saudi Arabia. The rest of the games were some heavy defeats including Spain, Yugoslavia (both 5-0), France (7-0) and Ireland (6-0). There were also narrow defeats to Ireland (3-2), Greece (1-0) and Netherlands (1-0).

Talianos had use of the legendary European Golden Boot winner Sotiris Kaifas, who only managed to score 1 goal for him in that time. Altogether in the 19 games he was in charge of, Cyprus only scored 11 goals, and conceded 55.

In 1976, Talianos also had a 16-day stint in charge, for a May 1976 World Cup Qualification Group Stage match vs Denmark losing 5-1.

Spasov was a Bulgariancoach that spent most of his career in his native country with a small stint managing teams in Israel. He also took charge of the Bulgarian national team twice and was in charge for 14 games which included 6 wins and 5 draws. He also had two separate times managing Omonia which together, lasting 3 seasons. He won the double with Omonia for all 3 seasons he was in charge, which is a given, considering he had full use of Sotiris Kaiafas.

And based on that form, his CV and his existing relationship with Kaifas, he was a shoo-in for success.

4 draws and 7 losses. 6 goals scored, 23 conceded.

He lost against Sweden twice, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Italy, Greece and Austria, but the 4 draws were against Greece twice, Italy and Czechoslovakia. Of those defeats, only two were heavy, with away losses to Czechoslovakia (6-0) and Sweden (5-0).

The first draw with Greece (1-1) both goals were scored within a minute of each other in the 89th and 90th minute. In the 1-1 draw with Italy, Cyprus took the lead in the 47th minute and let in an own goal 10 minutes later. This was against an Italy team that had won the World Cup the year before.

Iakovou came into the coaching set-up in Cyprus following his experience as a player, gaining 11 caps for the national team. In the 1970/71 season he won the Cypriot Cup with Anorthosis as a coach.

His CV seems pretty empty until taking over the nation's reigns 13 years later.

Iakovou lasted 15 games in his first stint, winning one and drawing 3 games. His only victory came vs Luxembourg, and the draws were against Canada, Poland… and Greece.

*Seems even the worse coaches are getting results vs Greece, eh?*

Along with that draw, he also managed to lose to Greece 3 times along with triple defeats to Hungary and the Netherlands and also lost to Austria and Jordan.

None of the results were especially disastrous, except for a 7-1 defeat by the Netherlands, where Cyprus actually took the lead. A Netherlands team that included Gullit, Schoenaker, Koeman and van Basten. They also lost 4-0 to Austria, but that 2-1 loss to Jordan must have stung. In the 14 games, the team conceded 30 and scored 7.

He wasn't gone long though after he left the first time, because…

The second time round he didn't last as long and did even worse. 3 draws, 11 defeats. Two of the draws were against Malta.

But…

The other draw?

Sacre bleu! 1-1 vs France. The scorer for Cyprus? One, Pambos Pittas.

That one result probably kept him in the job longer than he should have been. In the second lot of games he was in charge of, the team conceded 33 goals and scored 9. Forward line was better, but the defence was worse.

The coach with the second highest amount of matches in charge of the national team. Prior to taking over the National Team, he was manager of Aris Limassol for 5 years. Following his stint with the Ethniki he was head coach at Omonia, APOEL, AEL three times, Anorthosis, AEP Pafos, Nea Salamina, AEK and finally Apollon, finishing up his coaching career in 2011. In all that time, he won 1 (one) Cypriot Cup.

But with the national team he coached 41 games, smashing 9 wins, getting 11 draws and losing 21 times. There's an eclectic mix of countries in there. Didn't even play Greece once.

Wins: Faroe Islands x2, Malta, Georgia, Estonia x3, Latvia, Armenia

Draws: Iceland, Poland x2, Czechoslovakia, Israel, Sweden, Denmark, FYROM, Belgium, Kuwait, Armenia

Losses: USSR, Italy, Israel, Belgium x3, Wales x2, Romania x2, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Spain, Lebanon, Georgia, Iceland, Russia and Bulgaria

In all those games, the team conceded 70 goals but scored 38.

He had some players available to him to use as well. Along with Pambos Pittas, there were players like Neofytos Larkou, Panagiotis Engomitis, Marios Agathokleous, Sinisa Gogic, Konstantinos Malekkos. We're starting to see some people come through now…

He has had a… different career following his footballing escapades. In 2012 he was elected as a member of parliament for Limassol. As of 2019 he is the President of KOA ( The Cypriot Athletics Association).

Georgiou was with Cyprus for a good time, not a long time. And what a time it was. Georgiou is considered the best of the coaches that have taken charge of the national team, and it is well proven in the scores and the scalps he was able to take. One he wasn’t able to, however, was Greece.

He started his tenure with a 2-1 loss to Greece in Athens, and then went on a 6 game unbeaten run that included a draw with Finland and… that defeat of Spain. This was the game that a lot of fans of the national team bring up again and again, as to the capabilities of the team. Especially if you see who was playing for the Spanish National Team. We talked about it previously here when talking about Milenko Spoljaric and Sinisa Gogic.

But to relegate what he achieved with the National Team to just that one result does a disservice to him. Not only did he take charge of the famous win, he also beat Luxembourg twice, San Marino twice (naturally), Slovenia, Albania and Finland, and got draws with Finland and Romania. There were however a couple of low points as well when the national team lost to Estonia and Israel.

Nevertheless, he finished his 2 year reign with a positive goal difference, scoring 29 and conceding 23 goals, with 9 wins and 2 draws in 16 matches. Cyprus missed out on qualifying for the 2000 Euros playoffs by 1 point in a group that included Spain, Austria, Israel and San Marino.

Stavros Papadopoulos (1999-2001, second time)

In 1997 Papadopoulos took charge of the national team for 4 games between February and May, losing to Greece and Poland, but beating Lithuania and Latvia. Then Georgiou was brought in.

Once Georgiou’s time in charge was done, the Cyprus FA returned to Papadopoulos, who took charge of the team for another 10 matches. In those 10 matches, there were wins against Israel, Lithuania, Armenia, Romania and Ukraine and draws against Iran and Albania. He also took charge of losses vs Romania, the Netherlands and Lithuania.

Most of the games he took charge of were friendlies, except for the 3-2 win vs Israel to help get the national team within 1 point of the Euro playoffs, and a 4-0 loss to the Netherlands which started off qualification for 2002 World Cup as a means to go on. His time in charge ended with a 4-3 win vs Ukraine, and in the ten games he took charge, the team conceded 18 goals and scored 16.

He was also manager for Alki Larnaka for 3 games in 2008/09 season, and was caretaker for Ethnikos Achnas, for 1 match in January 2014.

Prior to accepting the call from the Cyprus FA, Vukotic already had plenty of experience in Serbia, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus as a coach, managing Partizan, Panionios, Altay SK, Nea Salamina, Apollon and Ethnikos Achna in an 11 year span and in fact taking Nea Salamina and Apollon into Europe (albeit InterToto Cup qualifiers for Salamina). After his time with Cyprus, he moved on to Farul Constanta in Romania, then PAOK, Levadeiakos and Panserraikos in Greece and spent four years as Academy Manager at Partizan finishing in 2016.

With Cyprus, he was in charge for 26 games and those games included wins vs Greece, Switzerland, Malta twice, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Albania with draws against Northern Ireland, Israel, Slovenia, Jordan and the Faroe Islands.

Most of the wins noted were in friendlies. The two qualification campaigns he was involved in, he led the Cypriots to gaining only 8 points in the 2004 Euro Qualifiers and 4 points in the 2006 World Cup qualifiers.

In the 16 games, Cyprus scored 33 goals and conceded 51.

Anastasidis is the longest-serving head coach in terms of games in the history of the national team, taking over for 56 games. In that time, he loomed over 17 wins and 10 draws. There were some famous wins including vs Austria, Wales twice, Ireland, Bulgaria and Hungary, but the result that sticks in my mind at least is the team’s draw vs Portugal. The 4-4 draw.

Anastasiadis came in with masses of experience having coached PAOK on three separate occasions, Iraklis twice and Panathinaikos.

Three of the four points Cyprus gained in the 2006 World Cup qualifiers were thanks to a win vs Faroe Islands he managed (3-0) and he also took charge of the team for close losses vs Switzerland (3-1) and Ireland (1-0). The team also got spanked 4-0 by France.

The 2008 Euro qualifiers looked to be going the same way starting with a 6-1 loss to Slovakia. Martin Skrtel scored the first goal. However, this was followed by a 5-2 win vs Steve Staunton’s Ireland. Ireland had Richard Dunne sent off, but that was after Cyprus scored their 5th goal. The game basically ended Steve Staunton’s tenure. There was then a 3-1 loss to Wales and then the unheard… A 1-1 draw with Germany. Miroslav Klose, Philip Lahm, Michael Ballack, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Torsten Frings’ Germany.

There was also a 1-1 draw with Ireland in Dublin that directly followed a 3-1 win vs Wales. There are 4 days between the two results.

In a qualifying group that included Germany, Wales, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (and San Marino) the team finished with 14 points.

The qualification group for the 2010 World Cup was a little calmer, with 9 points from a group that included Italy, Ireland, Bulgaria, Montengro and Georgia. However, there was also a narrow 3-2 loss to Italy in Italy, and this was after taking a 2-0 lead, with Gilardino completing his hat trick in the 92nd minute.

In September 2010, Cyprus began its qualification campaign for the 2012 Euros with a 4-4 draw against Portugal… In Portugal. Andreas Avraam scored the final equaliser in the 89th minute. Scenes.

*I was in a library trying to revise for an exam. Scenes, I tell you. Scenes.*

However, they only managed one more point in the campaign, which was 0-0 draw with Iceland. That’s still 2 points in a group that along with Portugal and Iceland, included Norway and Denmark as well.

Anastasiadis left in April 2011, with the team having scored 72 and conceded 101 goals in that time. After his stint with Cyprus, he had one more go at PAOK, two stints at Platanias, some time at Gianina and AEL Larisas and finished off his coaching career in 2019, managing the Greek national team.

Nioplias took over following his experience with the Greece U19s and U21s for 4 years and an 11 month stint as Panathinaikos manager where he won the double of the league and cup in Greece.

He was in charge of the National Team for 2 years, and in that time they played 18 games. And won… 2 of them. Moldova and Iceland. However he also managed two 0-0 draws vs Serbia and Switzerland.

While defensively the team hadn’t performed much worse than under Anastasiadis or Vukotic before him (conceding 36 in the 18 games), the attacking stats took a massive hit, with only 11 goals scored. Whereas those before him utilised a formation with two forwards, linking Okkas, Konstantinou, Mytides, Christofi, Sotiriou and whoever else they decided to play, Nioplias persisted with a lone striker up front, preferring to pack the midfield.

He left under a cloud, handing in his resignation, calling the team weak due to the reluctance of Cypriot teams to play Cypriot players. I wonder where we’ve heard that one before?

After he left Cyprus, Nioplias went 18 months without a project until he took over at Atromitos finishing their 2014/15 season in fourth. He then lasted a year at OFI Crete, before moving into a support staff role, coming back in March 2021 and lasting until October 2022. Since July 2023 he has been head coach at Levadiakos, having only lost one game since the writing of this article.

And then, following an interim period, Cyprus’ Harry Redknapp arrived to take over the team. Pambos Christodoulou is known as a head coach who seems to unearth talented players by wheeling and dealing, especially in the lower Portugal leagues and other Portuguese speaking nations such as Angola and Cape Verde. There are also rumours he takes a cut of any player bonuses as part of any contract signing, but that’s neither here nor there… Hence why I call him the Cypriot Harry Redknapp.

Christodoulou started off his coaching career at Doxa Katokopias in 2016, where he lasted an unheard of 4 seasons. He got Doxa promoted, then finished 11th, 7th and 11th. Immediately, he was snapped up by Olympiakos Nicosia, where he got the team to 7th place in the regular season. In March 2011 he took over at AEL Limassol where he stayed for 18 months. In those 18 months, he managed to win a Cypriot championship, the last one AEL has one, and the first one they had won in 44 years. He got AEL into the Europa League Group Stages, but their form at the beginning of the season was patchy. Even so, the only defeats he had in the 2012/13 season were against Anderlecht and Marseille. At the end of the 2012/13 season, he took over Anorthosis during the play-offs, where the team finished second.

Pambos was in charge of the national team for 13 matches. In those 13, the team won 4, drew 1 and lost the rest. The defeats were against Japan, Croatia, Israel, Wales, Belgium and Bosnia. Even so, a lot of the defeats were by an odd goal. The Japan loss was 1-0, vs Israel 2-1, Wales 2-1 and 1-0, and Bosnia 3-2. In his time in charge, the team conceded 20 goals but scored 16.

After Pambos left the national team he has gone on to coach AEL (again), Omonia, Olympiakos (again), Nea Salamina, FC Sevan in Armenia, was Director of Football at Karmiotissa, had coach at Achna, and, as of writing this article, is in charge of Olympiakos for a third time.

Christoforou came with experience of managing AEL and Apollon over the three seasons prior and had won the Cup with Apollon.

Christoforou managed to beat Gibraltar twice and Kazakhstan once with a draw against Estonia in there as well. The rest of the games were losses, including a 4-0 loss to Portugal and a 3-0 defeat to Belgium. The team conceded 17 goals in that time, scoring 9. 8 of the goals were in their wins.

Ben Shimon had plenty of experience prior to joining the National Team, however the Israeli coach had only been involved mostly in his own domestic league prior to that, managing 8 teams including both Hapoel and Maccabi Tel Aviv, Beitar Jerusalem and FC Ashdod. The only time he had stepped foot outside of Israel was to take over at AEK Larnaca for the 2012/13 season, where the team finished 4th.

As Cyprus manager he took charge of 24 games that included 5 wins and 4 draws. Bosnia, Slovenia, San Marino (twice) and Kazakhstan were the wins, Montenegro, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan were the draws. His last game in charge was a 6-1 loss to Belgium.

He avoided a relegation playoff in League C of the Nations League, with Slovenia coming last in the group, and finished 4th out of 5 for World Cup Qualifying and 4th out of 6 for the European Qualifying stages.

At the end of the European Qualifying stages he was released where he rejoined FC Ashdod for 3 seasons, and is now in charge of AEK again.

Prior to Kostenoglou taking charge, former Belgium U21 manager Johan Walem was appointed to lead a young team, however poor results and several clashes with the Cyprus FA ended with his tenure being less than the 10 match cut-off. Kostenoglou’s disaster of a tenure manages to make it on here though, despite only lasting approximately 15 months.

Prior to taking charge, Kostenoglou was head coach at AEK Athens (twice), Asteras Tripolis, AEL Larisa, Skoda Xanthi, Anorthosis, Apollon Smyrnis, Aris Thesalonikis and Doxa Dramas. He was also Head of the Academy at AEK Athens and assistant coach for 3 games for the Greek national team.

Kostenoglou was in charge for 17 games. He won 2. He beat Slovenia 1-0 and Estonia 2-0. There were also 2 draws vs Northern Ireland, and draws vs Estonia, Malta and Slovakia. He could not beat Malta, and there is even a 3-0 loss to the small group of islands as well.

In the 17 games, the team conceded 31 goals and scored 8. 8 goals. Two against Northern Ireland, 2 against Estonia, 2 against Malta and 2 against Slovenia.

He was rightly fired out of a canon (figuratively) for the performances and results.

He is now assistant coach at Chicago Fire.

And finally, we come to the man of the hour, the saviour, the self declared best head coach in Cyprus ever.

Ketsbaia has been a household name in Cyprus ever since he signed for Anorthosis as a player in the early 90s. His goal scoring record speaks for itself, and it got him a move first to AEK Athens and then to Newcastle United. From there he went to Wolves and Dundee before returning back to Anorthosis.

At Anorthosis he went from player, to player/coach, to head coach. As a coach he won two titles, a cup and a Super Cup, and got the team into the Champions League group stages. They were the first team from Cyprus to ever do that.

From there he was given the top job at Olympiakos Piraeus. He lasted 6 games. He was then made head coach of the Georgian national team where he stayed for 5 years.

He took over at APOEL for a season, and was fired prior to the team winning the league. AEK Athens was his next stop, and he lasted for all of 7 games. Then, he went to Orenberg in Russia, for 8 games. He finally went back to Anorthosis in 2019, and stayed for 3 seasons winning another Cypriot Cup.

The summer he was released from his contract at Anorthosis the second time was under a cloud of rumour and secrecy, as he was snapped up quickly by the Cypriot National Team very quickly after that. Rumours still circulate that his hiring was to avoid Anorthosis having to pay out compensation for his firing.

Nevertheless, in he came, with his 5-4-1 formation that actually has 7 defenders in it.

I waited to release this article until after the Lithuania game to not have to release an addendum after it should he have got the team to play a different formation and won by a lot. Instead, the team won by 1 goal, and even then, that was lucky, as Lithuania hit the crossbar.

His two other victories have come vs Greece and Israel. You will note further up, these are two teams that Cyprus have beaten before on various occasions, sometimes to very little fanfare. Ketsbaia has repeated several times about the “surprise” results he has had against those two nations. There are two losses to Scotland, Georgia, Norway and Spain each, Bulgaria and a 5-1 loss to Kosovo. Kosovo.

Conclusion

Here comes that graph I told you about… Are you ready?

The closer the average score per game pings to the top left, the worse the team is in defence and attack, and inversely, the closer the average score per game pings to the bottom right, the better in defence and attack. However, one thing this graph doesn’t take into account, is the quality of the opposition. Hence why I broke down the results and the opposition that each manager has had to face in the text above.

Now back to the quote in the title: “these games are not easy for a small country like Cyprus”.

That may be true. But the small country has shown before what it can do, against teams like for example, Spain, Scotland, Norway and Georgia. And it cannot do it playing 7 defenders and one lone striker. Ketsbaia lines up his team with so many bodies in defence and he still has the 3rd worst defence of all the coaches looked at, and middling attacking stats.

Oh, for the days of Georgiou and Papadopoulos. Hell, just a couple of hours of Pambo, Anastasiadis or Vukotic would be nice. Then, at least the quality players that the national team has available to it, would make these games that are not easy for a small country like Cyprus, at least more competitive.