AEΛ fans stayed in the stands until the final whistle by Kyriakos Athanasiou. They hoped their team would score a goal to avoid losing…
In the last minutes, the match got wild, and Paphos almost scored a second goal.
Many blue-yellow fans were pulling their hair out after Basel Zrandi’s shocking missed chance in stoppage time (see related photo).
The Lebanese international (born in Denmark) played like a rookie, heading the ball down and then out of bounds…
He can be called “the disappointment of the year.” The former Apollon star’s performance is far from the player who celebrated a championship in May 2022.
Earlier, he also acted like a beginner when a teammate gave him a perfect pass, but he missed the shot at goal.
We can’t blame Zrandi alone for last night’s loss against Paphos. The blue-yellows missed two clear chances in the first half when Gorter (Paphos’ goalkeeper) stopped Milosavljevic and Natel.
Kyriakos Athanasiou wrongly canceled a penalty for Natel after he was brought down by Gessant. The Croatian VARist Pajac sent him to review it. The replay showed no clear foul by Conceicao on Nikola Ioannou.
Martins still believes they can secure a top-six spot, even though they missed another chance to close the gap to three points behind APOEL. The Portuguese coach needs to motivate his players to perform well against lower-ranked teams.
