Open letter to Mr Thorsten Fink

Dear Mr Fink

We were quite contented when your sign up was announced. Not thrilled, but contented. Your CV was very good, you are a quite experienced coach with good experience in teams that target the local championships and qualification to the Group Stages of the European leagues. All that count and they have been the decisive factor for your sign up in APOEL.

However, since you have signed with APOEL, all that is history. You will not be assessed by what you have done but solely by what you are now doing and will do as APOEL's coach. I know it's still early and you are allowed some sort of "grace period".

Please keep always in mind that you have come to a team whose fans were continuously criticizing the coach that has linked his name with APOEL's golden pages of its recent history, Mr Ivan Jovanovic. We were criticizing him till the last moment he left (by his own decision), we were criticizing him even when he won the last championship before leaving in 2013, when we DID NOT CELEBRATE the Championship because we were NOT happy with the team's performance.

Therefore, it is natural and should be expected that you will be under continuous scrutiny and criticism. I am sure that you are prepared for that, as it is well known that in football you are as good as your last match had been.

I don't know how the Swiss or German fans react. Here we are Greeks. We are passionate and expressive. We love with passion and criticize likewise. APOEL is not just a small team from insignificant Cyprus. APOEL is a team that has written golden history with unsurpassed success in Champions League (the first team that reached the QFs starting from the 2nd qualifying round!), a team that has won the hearts of millions of people worldwide (even temporarily, but it did), a team that has inspired many others with its successes with it's "Cinderella story", it's "David v. Goliath story".

All that being said, I would like to point out the following:

• APOEL is a team that is expected and should play football of high standards at all times. OK, perhaps that is not realistic or possible, but the least that can be acceptable is to play GOOD football even when in a bad day.
• APOEL is a team that MUST ALWAYS WIN, MUST ALWAYS TARGET THE WIN, no matter who the opponent is. No, Mr Fink, a draw against ANY team in the Cyprus League IS NOT AND CANNOT BE ACCEPTABLE. Under ANY circumstances.
• APOEL is a team that MUST ALWAYS PLAY WITH THE NECESSARY PASSION for the WIN. And its coach, respectively, must do whatever is necessary to MAKE HIS PLAYERS to do what they must with the necessary passion for the win.

I did not like the fact that during the last match you spent most of the time sitting on the bench. Your role is not that of an observer. You abandoned the team and the players to their fate and that worried me a lot.

I did not like what you said after the match, that "the draw was OK". No, Mr Fink, a draw against omonoia CAN NEVER BE "OK". Especially when that draw is the result of a team that simply COULD NOT PLAY FOOTBALL.

You have players of quality Mr Fink. You are in a team where the working conditions are very good. We understand that APOEL for you is just another job. That's acceptable. We do not of course expect you to feel for out team as we do. But as long as you are the coach of our team, you are expected to show the necessary passion that a good professional must show when doing their job. We have not seen that passion yet and we hope and expect to see it very soon, starting from the Cup's match on Wednesday.

You are still enjoying a limited grace period, Mr Fink. But your grace period is running out. We will not accept any more excuses, we will not accept any more performances like the last one. Yes, you cannot always win in football, but YOU MUST ALWAYS PLAY FOR THE WIN, not just wait for the fatal to happen. And that was what APOEL did last Saturday. And that is what we refuse to see happening again.

Yes, we are APOEL and we don't like to lose. But what we REFUSE TO TOLERATE is losing without TRYING. Keep that in mind Mr Fink. And we'll be here to cheer and applaud when we see our APOEL play the football that it can and should play. I am sure your experience endows you with what it takes to achieve that.

Yes, we are APOEL and we always want to be THE CHAMPIONS. But that we do not want to achieve by "stealing" the results. So, the first TARGET is to play the football the team CAN PLAY, taking into consideration the quality of its players. And when it does, the CHAMPIONSHIP will come as a natural result.

Good luck in your career as APOEL's coach. Your success will be our team's success, and if we become ONE, we can do it.

YES, WE CAN.