Constantinos Charalambides

Constantinos Charalambides was born on the 25th of July 1981 in Nicosia, and he is a Cypriot international footballer who plays as a right winger for AEK Larnaca in the Cypriot First Division. He began his career on 1998–99 season with Cypriot club APOEL where he became a regular, appearing 121 times, and helped lead them to two championship titles of 2002 and 2004. He also won one Cup on 1999 and two Super Cups on 2002 and 2004. He then signed a two-and-a-half-year contract with Panathinaikos in the middle the 2004–05 season. Charalambides would make a total of 44 league appearances for Panathinaikos, but in the summer of 2007 the club chose not to renew his contract. In his final season with Panathinaikos, Charalambides spent the first six months of the season on loan to PAOK, where he made 16 league appearances and scored one goal. In the summer of 2007, Charalambides spent time on trial at English Championship side Cardiff City but eventually signed with German club FC Carl Zeiss Jena, playing in the 2. Bundesliga for the 2007–08 season. In the first half of the 2007–08 season, Charalambides featured regularly for Carl Zeiss Jena, making 10 starts and 12 total appearances and scoring one goal, but in January 2008 he and the relegation-bound club agreed it was better for both the player and the club to part ways, and the contract was mutually terminated. Not long thereafter, APOEL managed to lure Charalambides back to Cyprus to again play for his former team, and on 27 January he signed a four-year contract with APOEL. Since then he won the 2007–08 Cypriot Cup, the 2008–09 Cypriot First Division and also two Cypriot Super Cups (2008 and 2009) with APOEL. He also appeared in five official 2009–10 UEFA Champions League group stage matches with APOEL. The next year he won the 2010–11 Cypriot First Division adding another championship title to his honours list. The following season he appeared in nine 2011–12 UEFA Champions League matches for APOEL and provided three assists to his teammates, in the club’s surprising run to the quarter-finals of the competition. The next season he won again the 2012–13 Cypriot First Division, which was his 5th league title in his career with APOEL. During the 2013–14 season, he appeared in five 2013–14 UEFA Europa League group stage matches for APOEL and won all the titles in Cyprus, the Cypriot League, the Cypriot Cup and the Cypriot Super Cup. Charalambides made his only group stage appearance in APOEL’s 2014–15 UEFA Champions League campaign on 17 September 2014, coming on as an 79th-minute substitute in his team’s 1–0 defeat against FC Barcelona at Camp Nou. In the 2014–15 season, he managed to add two more titles to his collection, as APOEL won again both the Cypriot championship and the cup. On 15 May 2016, in the match which he lifted the 2015–16 Cypriot First Division trophy as APOEL captain, he announced that it was his farewell appearance to a club where he had spent and captained for his almost entire career, appearing in more that 400 matches in all competitions and winning 18 domestic titles. On 1 June 2016, Charalambides joined fellow Cypriot First Division club AEK Larnaca on a two-year contract. Charalambides has been an important player for the Cypriot national team in recent years. He scored twice in their famous 5–2 win over the Republic of Ireland in the Euro 2008 qualifiers in October 2006, and also scored in their 3–1 win over Wales during the same campaign. The midfielder also scored twice in Cyprus’ 4–1 win over Bulgaria in a World Cup qualifying match in October 2009. He is known for doing a flip when he scores a goal.
Honours
APOEL
Cypriot First Division (8) : 2001–02, 2003–04, 2008–09, 2010–11, 2012–13, 2013–14, 2014–15, 2015–16
Cypriot Cup (4) : 1998–99, 2007–08, 2013–14, 2014–15
Cypriot Super Cup (6) : 2002, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013