Anorthosis

The club had nothing to do with football at the start. It was founded on 30 January 1911 in the Varosha quarter of Famagusta as a reading room, Anagnostirion Anorthosis, built around Greek education and moral instruction. The name, meaning "Restoration," was chosen to declare support for Eleftherios Venizelos and the Enosis movement for union with Greece. Sport did not enter the picture until 1928, when the society opened sports sections, and football only took shape a year later, once the local side Podosferikos Omilos Ellinon Varosiou merged into the club and supplied its first team.

What followed was a run of thirteen Cypriot league titles and eleven Cyprus Cups, spread from the early 1950s through to 2008, with five championships in six seasons around the turn of the millennium standing as the club's strongest spell. Six Super Cups came alongside them, the first awarded automatically in 1962 for completing the domestic double.

Games against Omonia and APOEL of Nicosia have decided title races over the years, though neither fixture ever earned a derby name of its own.