AC OMONIA

'Athletic Club Omonia Nicosia' () is a Cypriot football club, which plays in the capital, Nicosia. With 19 league championships and 12 Cypriot Cups and 14 Super Cups they are, together with APOEL, the country's most-titled club in football. In addition, Omonia have claimed a record five domestic doubles - in 1972, 1974, 1981, 1982 and 1983. The Cyprus Football Association declared them as the team of the 20th century. Omonia also remains the only team to have won the Cyprus Cup 4 times in a row during the years between 1980 and 1984.
The club was established in 1948 and became member of Cyprus Football Association in 1953. As an athletic club, Omonia has basketball, volleyball, futsal and cycling sections.

History

Cyprus amateur football association

AC Omonia was founded in 1948, just after the Second World War. The establishment of the Club (along with that of a few others), was evoked from the political turbulence of that period and the conflict between left-wings and right-wings due to the Greek Civil War. In May 1948, APOEL Nicosia sent a letter based on political content to SEGAS (Greek Gymnastic-Athletic Clubs Association), violating the club's statute to not be involved in politics. After that letter, several footballers of the club criticized the their club but that followed the expulsion of those players from the team. Those players with some other people established the new club of Nicosia, with the name Athletic Club Omonia Nicosia.
The Greek civil war affected Cyprus in the political fanaticism and patience and affected the political life of the island, as well as the sports. For that reason several clubs were established and together with Omonia they established the Cyprus Amateur Football Association, since those teams were not accepted as members of the Cyprus Football Association. The new association formed its own competitions, a championship and a cup and lasted until 1953. Omonia won the double of those competitions until 1952 (four consecutive doubles) and won the cup in 1953.

Trophy hall

In 1953, the Cyprus Amateur Football Association teams were accepted to become members of the Cyprus Football Association, including AC Omonia, who joined as a First Division team. The Club announced its arrival on the Cypriot football scene by winning their first league title in 1960/61. Omonia finished seven points above second-placed Anorthosis Famagusta FC that season - and they have subsequently stayed ahead of their rivals in the first division with an impressive hall of trophies.

The golden decades of 1970s-1980s

Omonia Nicosia's dominance in Cypriot football, however, didn't come until 1974. They were most dominant in the 1970s, winning the league for six consecutive seasons from 1974 to 1979, a record that until today remains unbeaten. It was then that Omonia produced one of Cyprus's greatest footballers in striker Sotiris Kaiafas, as well as the impressive Gregory Savvas. Kaiafas would win the European Golden Boot after finishing as Europe's top domestic scorer in 1976 with 39 goals - an accolade still consWQidered the greatest achievement by any Cypriot player. Allegations of fixing the results were largely circulated. After Kaiafas, the next great striker of the team was Spas Tsevizof.
Despite the gap in quality between Omonia and other European champions, Omonia proved to be worthy opponents in UEFA club competition. In the European Champion Clubs' Cup in 1979/80, they recovered from a 10-0 defeat at AFC Ajax to win the return leg 4-0 with a dazzling display in Nicosia.
After the departure of Kaiafas, Omonia continued to produce talented players to keep up their winning ways. They were champions from 1981 to 1985 and again in 1987 and 1989. Stars of the 1980s golden decade were Georgios Savvidis and Spas Dzhevizov.

1990s

But despite claiming the title in 1992/93, Omonia were forced to live in the shadow of Anorthosis in the 1990s. Even so, the fans were able to enjoy the goalscoring exploits of Hungarian Joseph Juriac during the first part of the decade, and later those of Rainer Rauffmann.
A native German, Rauffmann arrived at the club in 1998. He was the island's leading marksman for four years and also played for Cyprus national football team after gaining Cypriot citizenship. He recently retired through injury at the age of 37. Another star of the 1990s was midfield player Kostakis Malekkos, who played after for APOEL Nicosia FC.

Colours and badge

The badge of the club is the shamrock. The shamrock represents the strength, the struggle, the insistence of the Omonia founders who were in difficult situation and it is also green which is the colour of the hope. Thus, the colours of the club are the green and the white. The Omonia founders chose the green colour, the "hope's colour", because despite that they were in difficult situation after the political events that took place in Cyprus in 1948 with their expulsion from APOEL, they hoped that better days were coming for the football in Cyprus, and also the new club, Omonia, would have leaded, become poineer and triumph in Cypriot football and also would have been in the conscience of the Cypriot people.

Stadium

Main articles: GSP Stadium, Eleftheria Indoor Hall

The team's home ground from 1999 onwards, which they share with local rivals APOEL FC and Olympiakos Nicosia is the 23,400 seater Neo GSP Stadium, (also known as the Pancypria Stadium) the biggest stadium in Cyprus. The team's previous stadium was Makario Stadium, since 1978 and before that the Palaio (Old) GSP Stadium since 1953, when the team joined the Cyprus Football Association. Both stadiums, like the New GSP Stadium, were shared as well by the other Nicosian teams, APOEL and Olympiakos. In the first years of its establishment, as a team of Cyprus amateur football association, Omonia was using the "Goal" Stadium. Plans have been drawn for Omonia to construct its own privately owned stadium near Tseri, a village just outside Nicosia [1]. The new arena is currently under construction and will become (in terms of spectator capacity) the largest football stadium on the island, with a capacity of 32,000 people.
The club's basketball team hosts its matches at the biggest indoor sport venue in the island, the Eleftheria Indoor Hall with a capacity of 6,800 seats while the volleyball team shares the Lefkotheo Indoor Hall which was built in 1980 with APOEL Nicosia. For the 2006-07 season, the futsal team uses the Indoor Hall of Melkonian institute which is a part of the institute complex and has capacity of 500 seats.

The fans

Omonia's fans are considered to be left-wing in their majority. Today they are estimated to be around 40% of the Cypriot people. Unlike the other teams of Cyprus, Omonia is so popular that today they have a lot of supporters from all the cities, towns and places in Cyprus, especially in Limassol, where they are estimated as the third most supported team after the other town's teams Apollon and AEL FC. During the years, after the political crisis in many Cypriot football clubs, where new leftist clubs were founded, the Cyprus football amateur federation was having much more attendance in the stadiums than the Cyprus FA championship because of Omonia which was the most popular in the island. The popularity of Omonia was one of the main reasons for the unification of Cypriot football and the acceptance of the leftist teams in the Cyprus Football Association.
They had a big difference attendances, since they existed before any other team in Cyprus; also, the GSP Stadium, the venue the team had for home games before, was considered too small for the team. In many matches tickets were sold in few hours after they were available, especially in matches against the arch-rival APOEL Nicosia.
In 2001, the team broke the record in Cyprus concerning ticket sales, with the number of 109,303 tickets sold. In 2003, they broke their own record with the improved figure of 140,740 and the record was broken again the following year with 143,033 tickets sold. As a note, this number was bigger than many popular teams in Europe.
There are two major fan clubs supporting the team, ''PA.SY.FI.'' and ''Gate 9'', which is the most active and biggest fan club. The club took its name from Kaiafas' father, Sotiris Kaiafas, who won the European Golden Boot in 1976 and was first organised in 1992. Since then they are following the team everywhere in the world. In some away European matches, there were more than 800 or sometimes 1000 supporters.

Current squad

Notable players

''Listed according to when they debuted for AC Omonia (year in parentheses):''

★ Sotiris Kaiafas (1967)

★ Mihai Mocanu (1972)

★ Gregory Savva (1973)

★ Giorgos Savvidis (1981)

★ Spas Dzhevizov (1984)

★ Emil Spasov (1988)

★ Kostas Malekkos (1989)

★ Rainer Rauffmann (1997)

★ Efstathios Aloneftis (2001)

★ Marco Haber (2002)

★ Jozef Kozlej(2004)

★ Paulo Rink (2006)

★ Daniel Bălan (2006)

★ Zé Elias (2006)

Notable Managers

★ Igor Netto (1967)

★ Helmut Senekowitsch (1991)

★ Dušan Galis (1999)

★ Asparuh Nikodimov (2000)

★ Arie Haan (2000)

★ Henk Houwaart (2000)

★ Toni Savevski (2002)

★ Ioan Andone (2006)

★ Ioannis Matzourakis (2007)

Trophies

Football

'Cyprus Football Association'

★ 'Cypriot Championship:'

★
★ 'Winner (19):' 1961, 1966, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1993, 2001, 2003

★ 'Cyprus Cup:'

★
★ 'Winner (12):' 1965, 1972, 1974, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1988, 1991, 1994, 2000, 2005.

★ 'Cyprus FA Shield:'

★
★ 'Winner (14):' 1966, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1994, 2001, 2003, 2005
'Cyprus Amature Football Federation'

★ 'Championship:'

★
★ 'Winner (4):' 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952

★ 'Cup:'

★
★ 'Winner(5):' 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953

Volleyball

★ 'Cup:'

★
★ 'Winner (2):' 1999, 2006

Records

★ Biggest Victory: '11-0' v Doxa Katokopia, Championship, January 17, 2004

★ Biggest European Victory: '6-1' v FA Red Boys Differdange, Champions Cup, Round 1, October 3, 1979

★ Worst Defeat: '0-10' v Ajax Amsterdam, Champions Cup, Round 1, October 24, 1979

★ Worst League Defeat: '1-7' v AEL FC, 1953-54

★ Most League Points (2 for a win): '54', 1976-77

★ Most League Points (3 for a win): '67', 1998-99

★ Most League Goals: '91', 1960-61

★ Most consecutive league matches unbeaten: '46', January 29, 1984 - December 14, 1985

★ Most Appearances : '503' Andreas Kanaris

★ Most Goals scored : '321' Sotiris Kaiafas

★ Most Goals scored in a Match: '8' Rainer Rauffmann v Anagennisis Deryneia, 1998

★ Most Goals scored in League season:: '44' Sotiris Kaiafas, 1976-77

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