“The club is really an athletic component of a bigger mission of the Pancyprian Association, which has cultural, arts, and educational programs,” said Paul Kontonis, assistant coach of the amateur side. “Core to what we’re doing is helping Greek Cypriots come to study here in the US. We have numerous players every year that we are providing a scholarship to and giving them a roster spot to play with us as well.”
“Not only are we striving for excellence in how the team plays, but we’re actually trying to help out these individuals continuously, even to this day,” Kontonis added.
Overall Pancyprian Plan
As Kontonis explained, the team exists as part of a larger organization – one formed in the wake of Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974, which left thousands of Cypriots displaced. As the organization’s co-founder and president Philip Christopher outlined, New York Pancyprian-Freedoms soon found a home in the local soccer hierarchy. This included a string of Cosmopolitan Soccer League (CSL) championships – the team has won nine in total – as well as that trio of Open Cup wins in the 1980s.
The club’s history includes top-tier international contests in addition to domestic honors. Christopher recalled the Pancyprian-Freedoms’ trips to the CONCACAF Champions Cup, granted to the annual winner of the Open Cup.
At the club’s headquarters, you’ll find photographs of the team and Honduras’ C.D.S. Vida as they prepared to play a match at Hofstra University in 1984.
That wasn’t the team’s only time in continental competition. They also have the distinction of defeating Mexico’s Puebla F.C. a round earlier that same year – and eliminating another Honduran side, Club Deportivo Motagua, in 1983. As Christopher recalled, the away leg of the latter series included thousands of supporters of Motagua’s local rivals turning out to see the two teams clash in Tegucigalpa.
It was rarefied air for the Pancyprian-Freedoms, who were a semi-pro outfit at the time.
Roots in the Old Country
The early years of New York Pancyprian-Freedoms saw a number of European players donning the club’s colors. Nowadays, the emphasis is more on player development. “In our last national winning team,” General Manager George Halkidis explained, “I think 80 percent of the roster was players that moved up the ranks.”
There’s a generational component to that player development as well. “There’s a great number of those that came and stayed – and their sons continued on to the youth programs,” Halkidis said. And that can even go beyond one generation.
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