EIGHT POLICE officers were injured and eight people arrested Sunday in one of the most  serious outbreaks of football violence so far this year.

Limassol’s Tsirion stadium, the venue for the Apollon v APOEL game, was left in ruin after visiting fans went on the rampage, setting fire to dozens of seats and fighting pitched battles with police on the stands.

With tensions running high before and during the match, the real trouble erupted 10 minutes before full-time right after hosts Apollon scored a second goal. The game ended 2-0 to the Limassol side.

On the eastern wing of the stadium, APOEL supporters began ripping out and burning seats. When firemen tried to approach to put out the fires, they were forced back under a hail of soda cans and water bottles which had meanwhile been looted from a canteen. The same treatment was reserved for a group of police officers who tried to disperse the crowd and clear the way for the firefighters.

A number of flares, smuggled into the grounds, were also hurled onto the field.

Eventually riot police moved in and using teargas managed to break up the disturbances.

In the fracas, eight police officers were injured slightly, and eight persons aged between 18 and 25 were arrested.  They will be appearing in court for their remand hearing today.

Police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos did not rule out further arrests once authorities had looked at CCTV footage.

Hooligans had smashed up the stadium toilets and broke the glass pane of an emergency exit, later using the glass shards as projectiles. The track around the field was extensively damaged. According to the stadium administrator, overall the damages to the stadium are estimated at around €10,000, which APOEL club has agreed to pay for.

Disturbances carried over outside after the final whistle, as hooligans smashed the window panes of several nearby shops and of one residence, and damaged two private vehicles and a police patrol car.

Heavily-outnumbered police were able to keep the two sets of fans separate, thus preventing disturbances from escalating.

“Can you imagine what might have happened had the fans clashed?” the police spokesman said on CyBC radio yesterday.

Before the game, a bus transporting APOEL fans stopped on the highway, youths got out and started pelting oncoming cars with stones. Another group attacked a residence and a shop next to the stadium

Police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos said hooligans were constantly evolving their tactics to outsmart stadium security. Minutes before kickoff, a large group of around 300 APOELl fans arrived all at once at the turnstiles, rushing the police officers posted there. A number of them reacted angrily to the body checks. In the resulting confusion, some of them managed to slip flares inside undetected.

“It was a mob that destroyed everything in its path,” Katsounotos said. “This is not the first time that they [fans] gather en masse like this.”

A day earlier, and acting on a tipoff police in Nicosia had found and seized a stash of around 80 flares believed to have been intended for the game.

Katsounotos sought to deflect attention away from the police, noting that the security steps agreed so far with football authorities and clubs amounted only to “half measures.”

And he repeated calls to ban visiting fans from high-risk fixtures.

Last November, the Cyprus Football Association (KOP) announced a raft of new measures to combat hooliganism, including imposing an 18-month ban on the traveling fans of either club involved in disturbances.

Anthoullis Mylonas, executive director of KOP, told the Mail yesterday that the measure was still in effect.

Asked whether it would be enforced for the Apollon and APOEL supporters following Sunday’s incidents, Mylonas said this would be “discussed” at a KOP meeting today.

Also in November, the FA and KOA had unveiled bold plans to install state-of-the-art surveillance system in football stadiums, each claiming credit for the idea.

Under the scheme, the data gathered by CCTV surveillance cameras is fed into a central computer, which using special software can identify an individual within minutes. The system works in tandem with ticketing.

British security experts were to be invited to Cyprus to advise authorities here on the best way to install the system, which could cost up to €1 million per stadium.

Asked how the idea was progressing, Mylonas said an official of the English FA had come to the island two months ago. The official had prepared a memo with suggestions on security measures. “We are currently studying his recommendations,” Mylonas said.