Omonia Nicosia routs Celje 3-0, perfect record in Europa League intact

It took Omonia Nicosia just 16 minutes and a VAR review to start building a rout that finished 3-0 at Stadion Z'dezele. Celje, who had already seen a goal chalked off for offside in the buildup, never found a way to contain the Cypriot side, which took home all three points from the Europa League clash with a clinical display in front of both boxes.

The match opened with a scare for Omonia Nicosia: in the 8th minute, Loïs Diony put the ball in the net after a handball in the buildup, but VAR ruled it out and the scoreboard stayed blank. The response did not take long. Eight minutes later, Jaden Montnor latched onto a through ball from Ewandro and finished with his right foot, low and inside the left post, to make it 0-1, a goal that was confirmed this time after a review.

Celje had their moments in the first half, with shots from Yaya Dukuly and Svit Seslar failing to trouble the frame of the goal, but their territorial dominance (they closed the opening half with far more of the ball) never translated into clear chances. The sides went into the break at 0-1, with Omonia Nicosia managing the lead comfortably, well aware their edge in front of goal was far greater than the home side's.

The game put away after the break

The second half only deepened the story. In the 58th minute, after a handball by Blaz Kramer that did not result in a penalty, Muamer Tankovic latched onto a through ball from Jean-Kévin Duverne and finished with his right foot from the center of the box to stretch the lead to 0-2. Celje shuffled their bench with several substitutions in search of a reaction, but Henning Berg's side controlled the tempo and picked its spots.

The knockout blow arrived in the 84th minute: from a corner kick, Senou Coulibaly struck with his right foot from the center of the box to make it 0-3, assisted by Mihlali Mayambela. Celje, who finished the match with two players booked late on, Benjamin Verbic for the hosts and Coulibaly himself for the visitors, had no response, and the game wound down without further incident into stoppage time.

The numbers behind the gap

Possession clearly favored Celje, but it did them little good without a cutting edge. Omonia Nicosia was far sharper in the final third, as the match stats show:

The shots on target tally, two to six, tells the story well: Celje saw plenty of the ball but rarely tested the visiting goalkeeper, while Omonia Nicosia converted nearly half of its shots on frame into goals. Our after-the-fact expected goals estimate, calculated from shot locations, backs up the scoreline too: 0.894 for Celje against 2.073 for Omonia Nicosia.

The result flatly contradicts the pre-match projections, which had given Celje a 38% chance of winning, 28% for a draw and 34% for Omonia Nicosia, with expected goals of 1.46 for the home side and 1.38 for the visitors. What actually happened on the field was a far cry from that balanced forecast.

With this result, Omonia Nicosia moves to 6 points in its Europa League group, the product of two wins in two matches played. Celje, meanwhile, remain pointless after two outings, a six-point gap to today's opponent that sums up pretty well how each side's path through this phase of the competition is shaping up.