APOEL and Bilbao punch way above their weight

Both clubs' displays in midweek showed that money need not always be the defining factor, writes MARY HANNIGAN

IT MIGHT have been Lionel Messi who earned the bulk of the footballing headlines this week after his masterclass against Bayer Leverkusen, but the performances of APOEL and Athletic Bilbao in the Champions and Europa League, respectively, were more than a little noteworthy too.

APOEL’s penalty shoot-out triumph over Lyon saw them become the first Cypriot side to reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League, a remarkable achievement for a club of such limited resources at a stage of the competition that is, more often than not, dominated by the wealthiest clubs in world football.

Nine of the teams in the last 16 of this season’s Champions League – Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Chelsea, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Lyon and Napoli – feature in the top 20 of Deloitte’s most recent list of the world’s richest clubs, with most of the remaining seven not far off the elite.

APOEL’s feat, then, was a fillip for the less monied of clubs.

“We have a budget of around €9 million,” APOEL vice-president Theo Kyriakides told BBC Radio 5 Live, “the maximum amount of money we have spent for the last four years was €1.2 million for three players altogether. Lyon spent more than €140 million in the last two years on transfers, so you can see the extent of our achievement.”

Athletic Bilbao’s spending isn’t quite as frugal as APOEL’s, but it still pales next to that of Manchester United, the team to whom they gave a footballing lesson in their 3-2 win at Old Trafford on Thursday night.

And any notion United’s heart isn’t quite in the Europa League was somewhat dispelled by Alex Ferguson naming a side that included 11 current or former internationals, seven of them regular starters for the team this season.

The contrast between the two clubs’ resources can be demonstrated starkly enough by one simple fact: United’s Spanish goalkeeper David de Gea cost more than the entire Bilbao starting line-up for the game. As did Wayne Rooney. And Ashley Young and Phil Jones only cost a little bit less.

Indeed, the individual transfer fees paid for four of the players United had on their bench – Rio Ferdinand, Anderson, Michael Carrick and Nani – were higher than the combined cost of the Bilbao XI.

Where Bilbao differ from APOEL, though, is that their success is of the home-grown variety due to their historical policy of recruiting only Basque players – although that policy has been eased somewhat in more recent years to include players who come through the ranks at Basque clubs, if not Basque themselves.

Bilbao’s team at Old Trafford, then, was all “native”, six of them coming through the youth ranks at the club (United’s starting line-up included just four English players and two from their youth system).

APOEL, meanwhile, featured just two Cypriots in their history-making team, the rest Brazilian, Portuguese, Greek and Argentinian. So while it was a glorious footballing night for Cyprus, it wasn’t exactly a home-produced one.

Which it was for Bilbao. Lying fifth in La Liga and having made the Copa del Rey final, where they will be seeking their first trophy in 28 years against Messi and Co, it’s already been a memorable season for the club – at little cost, in today’s terms.