Zenon (Zeno) was an outstanding Hellenistic philosopher, the only known resident of the ancient city-kingdom of Citium, the predecessor of Larnaca. But there are two philosophers named Zenon. Our Zenon lived and worked mainly and died in 262 B. C. in Athens, where he founded his Stoic school. The second one, a pre-Socratic Zenon of Eleaia, is best known for his paradoxes (aphorisms about an arrow).
Everything in Larnaca is dedicated to Zenon of Citium (and old residents of the island remember his face on the old Cypriot 20 cent coin), including the Gymnastic Club Zenon Stadium, whose portico we can contemplate.
The cult of sports and various Olympic competitions revived in European culture by Pierre de Coubertin in 1896, go perfectly with the antique architecture. That is why the four-columned portico of the city's main club resembles the propylaea of stadiums all over the world.
In the late 1980s, the Zenon Gymnasium Society built another stadium, where the USSR national football team, which played since 1924, played its last match on 13 November 1991. It was a qualifying match for the European Championship in Gothenburg. The midfielder Andrei Kanchelskis scored the nations' last ever goal before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Moreover, he scored from the penalty line — with his cheek! — ironically, the author of this last goal was the star of Manchester United, where he was already playing at that moment. The USSR eventually won the match 3-0, but went to the championship as the CIS team.
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