Fairytale Continues - APOEL Stuns the French to Advance to UEFA Champion League’s Quarter-finals

In a tension-filled second leg match, APOEL FC advanced to UEFA Champions League quarter-finals, after beating Olympique Lyonnais 1-0 in Nicosia and 4-3 in the penalty shoot out on Wednesday night.

Trailing 1-0 after the first match in Lyon two weeks ago, APOEL scored with Gustavo Manduca in the ninth minute and levelled the aggregate score. Constantinos Charalambides got possession of the ball down the right and after escaping the attentions of two defenders send a low cross towards the far post, where Manduca had no difficulty scoring.

After that, both teams had their chances to score and break the deadlock, but none of them managed to do that and the tie was send into extra time.

As Peter Schmeichel had predicted in an interview to Sigma TV, ”the players of the French team have no idea what's in store for them and how hard they will have to fight in order to advance” When they realised that their opponent was tougher than expected, they become nervous and lost their concentration.

On the other hand, urged by 24000 supporters, APOEL players kept their nerve, even when they had to finish the extra time with one player less, after Manduca collected a second yellow card and was send off the pitch.

In the penalty shoot-out APOEL’s goalkeeper Dionisis Chiotis, who as his coach revealed later had studied extensively the way each player of Olympique Lyonnais kicks a penalty, denied Alexandre Lacazette and Michel Bastos and APOEL became the first Cypriot side to reach the European Cup quarter-finals, as Aílton, Morais, Nektarios Alexandrou and Ivan Tričkovski all scored from the spot. 

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