Cypriot Cup

Founded	1934
Region	Cyprus (Cyprus Football Association)
Number of teams	28
Current champions	APOP Kinyras Peyia (1st time)
Most successful club	APOEL (19 times)
Television broadcasters	Lumiere TV CytaVision
Cypriot Cup 2009–10

The Cypriot Cup (Greek: Κύπελλο Κύπρου;) or Cyprus Coca Cola Cup is the main cup competition in Cypriot football, run by the Cyprus Football Association. It began in 1934, the same season with the Cypriot Championship. It is the second most important competition for Cypriot club teams. The sponsor of the competition is Coca Cola.

[edit] Format

The competition was traditionally a pure knockout tournament. All ties were two-legged, except the final which was in a single match. In case of a tie, extra time was played and if the extra time was tie, there was a repeated final.

[edit] 2002-03 until 2005-06 Format

However, the format of the competition changed radically in the season 2002/03 and until 2006 the format had a lot of similarities with the UEFA Champions League. That caused difficulties for weak teams to make the surprise. The competition currently consists of the first three knock out rounds, one stage of group competition (where teams play each other in the style of "home-and-away" or "regular season" competition), and then three rounds of knock-out finals.

All knock-out ties are two-legged, with each team hosting one match. The team which scores the greater aggregate number of goals qualifies for the next round. The away goals rule applies. Extra time and penalty kicks are used to determine the winner, if necessary. An exception are the final and the first two rounds which are a single match played.

54 teams competing Cyprus FA championships from First until Fourth Division are playing in the competition, with all First Division teams receiving a bye until at least on round three. In the first round, the 40 teams playing in low divisions, are paired off to play each other in a single-match playoff in round one. The winners proceed to the second stage, and they paired off again under the same rules.

In the third round, the second round winners are joined by the six teams that finished between 9th and 11th position in the previous season's First Division, and the tree promoted teams to the First Division from the Second one. The third round is played in two-legs, home and away.

Round four in the Cypriot Cup is a league system, where the top eight teams from last season's First Division and the other eight winning teams from round two are placed into four groups of four. The four top First Division teams are top seeded and cannot be placed into the same group. The same with the teams which were between 5th and 8th in the ranking are in second top seeded and cannot play each other, rather than one team of the top seeded and two from the third round winners. All teams play each other two, home and away, with the top two teams in each group proceeding to the quarter finals, from where the Cup becomes a standard knockout competition, played in two legs and one leg for the final. The top teams of the group can not be paired, same for the teams that were in the same group.

[edit] Changes in 2006

Cyprus Football Association changed again in 2006 the formation of the cup by removing the groups from the round of 16 to the quarter finals. At the round of 16, every team which was among the 8 first teams in the Cypriot First Division, are drawn to play a winner team of the Third Round. There are no seeded and unseeded team in the Group Round or in the round after anymore.

[edit] Changes in 2008

Cyprus Football Association once again changed the formation of the cup. CFA decided to create two cup tournaments, the amateur cup tournament in which the teams from the third and fourth divisions (total 28 teams) are going to participate and also the professional cup tournament in which the teams from the first and second divisions are going to participate. The semi-finalists of the last season's cup tournament will qualify directly to the round of 16. Both Cups are going to have five stages:

• Round of 24 - Two-legged knock-out matches
• Round of 16 - Two-legged knock-out matches
• Quarter-finals - Two-legged knock-out matches
• Semi-finals - Two-legged knock-out matches
• Final - Single match in a neutral stadium

[edit] Finals

[edit] Performance By Club