Ivan Trickovski made his Champions League debut with APOEL as his side celebrated an impressive 2:1 victory over Russian giants Zenit.

Trickovski started at left winger in a 4-2-3-1 formation for APOEL and played all 90 minutes.  He had a solid game as the experts rating on UEFA.com gave him a 7 for his contributions for APOEL.  Trickovski attempted several shots but his best opportunity came in the 49th minute when he combined nicely with Ailton Almeida but his shot from a good position was saved by the opposing keeper.

Trickovski was familiar with the Zenit keeper as just on 2 September 2011, during a EURO 2012 qualifier, Trickovski and Macedonia faced Russia whose starting keeper Vyacheslav Malafeev was also the starter for his club team Zenit.  The Russian giants initially took the lead in the 63rd minute before APOEL scored two goals in the span of two minutes between the 73rd and 75th minute.  APOEL has a huge Brazilian influence on their squad and both goalscorers for the Cypriot club during today’s game happened to be Brazilians in Gustavo Manduca and Ailton Almeida.

In the other match of Group G, Porto defeated Shakhtar Donetsk 2:1 so Porto and APOEL find themselves occupying the top two spots in the group with three points each.  APOEL next faces Shakhtar Donetsk on 28 September 2011 and they are catching them at a good time since the Ukrainian giants will be without the services of both Yaroslav Rakitskiy and Dmytro Chygrynskiy as each player picked up a red card during today’s game against Porto.