Club News
The Road to Paphos
Why do footballers choose this city?
Michael Dellios — Akritas Chlorakas.
Why Paphos for football?
There may be no single answer. At first division level, a club can offer the expectations that follow a league title and a European breakthrough. In the second division, another can offer a place in a community’s attempt to return to the top flight. Those opportunities exist close to each other, yet ask different things of the players who take them.
To explore the question, let’s pick a first division team and a second division team, then follow one player from each. Their journeys give us two perspectives on football in Paphos: what a new destination can offer when a career is still taking shape, and what it can offer after a player has already reached the biggest stages.
Why Paphos has become a football destination
Football’s most familiar destinations are its largest markets. England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France dominate much of the conversation about where players should want to go. Yet a career develops through the opportunities available at particular clubs. The reputation of a league is only part of the decision.
Playing time, a role within a team, the standard of competition and the chance to contribute to something ambitious can all make a destination worth considering. A smaller football country can still present a substantial sporting challenge.
Paphos offers a revealing example.
Pafos FC won the Cypriot championship for the first time in 2024/25 and made its Champions League league-phase debut in 2025/26. That journey demonstrated how a club in Cyprus could reach the same competition as Europe’s most established names.
For a footballer, a move here can mean joining a club pursuing domestic trophies and European qualification. Elsewhere in the same district, it can mean becoming part of the work required to earn promotion.
Nearby, Akritas Chlorakas brings that second possibility into focus. Founded in 1971 and rooted in Chloraka, Akritas competed in the first division in 2025/26. Now in the second division for 2026/27, the club faces the task of building towards a return.
Both clubs have known top-flight football. Their present circumstances give players different ways to contribute to the game in Paphos.
Michael Dellios: from Switzerland through Scotland and Norway to Chloraka
From Akritas, take Michael Dellios.
Michael’s road to Paphos took him from Arbon Evro Academy and Rorschach Evro Academy in Switzerland to BSC-Evro Glasgow, Raith Rovers and Kilmarnock Reserves in Scotland, then Baerum in Norway. In Paphos, his journey continued from PEKA to Akritas Chlorakas. It is a route through clubs and leagues that receive less international coverage, but which form an essential part of football’s wider landscape.
A move across borders brings a player into another squad, another competition and another way of working. The career record captures the destinations. The development between them is harder to reduce to a line on a profile.
Switzerland, Scotland, Norway and Cyprus are stops in that development. Each belongs to the experience Dellios brings into the next dressing room, even if the details of what he learned there remain his to tell.
At Akritas, he joins a club with recent experience of the division above. The challenge is concrete: compete in the second division and contribute to the team’s progress. For a player still establishing his career, that is an opportunity with stakes of its own.
His road to Paphos is worth following on those terms. Chloraka is where the next part of it takes place.
David Luiz: a new chapter at Pafos FC
For our first division example, take David Luiz.
His road began at Vitória in Brazil before taking him to Benfica in Portugal. Chelsea followed, then Paris Saint-Germain, a second spell at Chelsea and Arsenal. He returned to Brazil with Flamengo and Fortaleza before joining Pafos FC in 2025.
That journey includes a Champions League title with Chelsea in 2012 and a Copa Libertadores title with Flamengo in 2022. It also includes Brazil’s home World Cup in 2014, when Luiz scored against Colombia in the quarter-final.
By the time he arrived in Cyprus, Luiz had experienced occasions that define football careers. His move coincided with a club beginning a new chapter of its own: Pafos’s first season in the Champions League league phase.
There is an interesting meeting of experience and opportunity in that arrival. Luiz brought a career shaped by major clubs and international football. Pafos FC had earned the chance to test its own progress against opponents accustomed to that stage.
His history gives context to what he can bring. The club’s progress gives context to what is still there to pursue.
It does not explain his personal reasons for signing. Those belong to Luiz himself. But it helps explain why Paphos could present a meaningful football challenge to someone who had already achieved so much.
What a new beginning means in Paphos
Dellios and Luiz do not need matching careers to belong in the same story. We chose them to explore a place, and each reveals something different about it.
For one, Paphos is the setting for the next stage of a developing career. For the other, it is a further chapter after major international and club achievements. Their routes show how different kinds of opportunity can lead to the same district.
That is part of the answer to “Why Paphos for football?”
There is a club building on a European breakthrough and a community club working towards a return to the first division. There are players bringing years of experience and players seeking to establish what they can do next.
For the supporters following those teams, the journeys have become local stories. A career that began in Brazil now has a chapter here. So does a route through Switzerland, Scotland and Norway.
The roads began elsewhere. What happens next belongs to football in Paphos.
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Akritas FC Editorial Team
The Akritas FC Editorial Team publishes official club updates and editorial features for supporters. Content is produced for Akritas Chlorakas FC and will expand as verified news, match reports and media are released.
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