Cyprus will take on Serbia on Wednesday afternoon at the GSZ Stadium in their first friendly of 2012 with Greek coach Nicos Nioplias hoping to start fresh after a dismall campaign last season.
Nioplias has endured a nightmare start to his reign as national team boss since replacing Greek compatriot Angelos Anastasiades last year picking up just one win – a 3-2 friendly victory over Moldova – as well as crunching defeats to Denmark, Portugal, Iceland and Norway in the previous qualifying campaign.
His last game in charge last year also ended in a 2-1 friendly reverse to Scotland in Larnaca.
The former Panathinaikos and Greece under-21 coach had blamed his side’s poor results on the lack of depth when it came to team selection.
Meanwhile, it has been announced by the Cyprus FA that captain Yiannis Okkas has stepped down from international football having played a record 106 times for Cyprus scoring 27 times.
Cyprus has the highest number of overseas players in Europe with around 70% of all first division footballers originating from outside of the island.
This in turn has led to a downturn in results at all national team levels with Nioplias arguing that it is slim pickings when it comes to assembling a squad together ahead of international matches.
In fact, Cyprus many times features players that are either bench-warmers at their clubs or are in the twilight of their careers.
For this reason, the Cyprus Football Association (CFA) are pushing towards naturalising a group of non-Cypriot players in a bid to kickstart the island’s ailing form in the last four years.
Already three players – APOEL’s Portuguese midfielder Helio Pinto, Anorthosis’ French midfielder Vincent Laban and AEL’s Portuguese defender Dossa Junior – are in line to get new passports after special requests were made to the Interior Ministry and it now appears that two more players – APOEL’s other Portuguese midfielder Nuno Morais and Omonia’s Greek defender Christos Karipides – are expected to follow.
Nioplias has been tasked with guiding Cyprus to a respectable finish in the 2014 World Cup qualifying campaign which begins in September this year and will see the island tussle with Norway and Iceland – once again – as well as Switzerland, Albania and Slovenia.
Cyprus kickoff their qualifying campaign with a trip into hostile territory on September 29 to face Albania – the side that hammered the island 6-1 in a friendly in August 2009.
Cyprus will take on Serbia on Wednesday in The Cyprus International Tournament with Radovan Curcic’s side having beaten Armenia 2-0 on Tuesday.
Cyprus and Serbia earlier met in a friendly back in February 2009 in Nicosia with the visitors emerging 2-0 winners after first half strikes from Milan Jovanovic and Danko Lazovic.
At club level, Cyprus has enjoyed better success than Serbia in the last few years with APOEL twice eliminating Serbian opponents – Red Star Belgrade and Partizan – in UEFA competitions.
The other friendly game in the tournament is Canada-Armenia which will take place on Wednesday at 7pm at the Tsirio Stadium in Limassol.
Cyprus’ friendly will be refereed by Dutchman Kevin Blom and his assistants Nicky Siebert and Patrick Langkamp.
Cyprus Weekly