It was tough to watch, but that is not exactly a new feeling for us, is it? In the post-season play-offs, we’ve conceded a much higher number of goals than we did during the regular season. The team looks adrift, lost, without directions or purpose.
In the post below, Alex gave us a good match review based on radio coverage and highlights. In a weird internet-age bit of irony, Alex who lives in Greece, could not watch the game on Supersport while I, living in the United States, was able to watch Supersport on demand over the internet (access is blocked on this site to residents of Greece). It all has to do with broadcasting rights in different countries, a subject too complex for this post, but worth a discussion another day.
Anyway, back to the game. We lined up like this:
Lyberopoulos—-Blanco
Rivaldo——————Ramos
Kone—-Kafes
Pilatsikas—————-Azcarate
Moretto
So, by my count, that is four “reserve” players (Ramos, Kone, Azcarate and Moretto). Although Ramos and Moretto were regular first team fixtures under Ferrer, they haven’t played much under Kostenoglou. Azcarate, for his part, showed why he hasn’t seen playing time under either gaffer up until now. I can’t believe he is from Argentina.
Azcarate looked shaky from the start. He seemed to stand too tall, not crouching down to lower his center of gravity and change directions to stay with quick attackers. His hands were raise up and the wrists when he ran like he was almost afraid to tackle hard. The first sign of real trouble can at the 13:02 mark. A ball was passed back to Azcarate but when he put his foot out to trap the ball it bounced off him hard and skidded back a good five or more yards right into the path of Panionios’s Algerian striker, Rafik Djebbor, perhaps their most dangerous player. Djebbor took the ball and then beat Azcarate’s attempted “tackle”, took a few touches and then fired on goal. The shot was saved, but the point had been made. AEK needed to mark this guy throughout the match. They did not.Â
From there it just got worse. In the 16th minute, the entire AEK defense got beat near the half-way line by a through pass that spliced four AEK defenders to find…you guessed it…Djebbor bearing down on our goal. Moretto, who had to do more than his fair share during the match, charged off his line, forcing Djebbor to dribble wide and take a shot from a harder angle. Fortunately for us, he shot just wide and hit the side netting.
At this point a Panionios goal looked inevitable and, sure enough, it came in the 21st minute. Bourbos got beat on the left side, a nice cross sailed directly to the back post of our goal and Pilatsikas was too far off his mark who easily headed in an easy goal.
Unlike Panionios’s goal, which any soccer fan could see coming for about ten minutes, our 25th minute equalizer was a suprise. On a quick counter-attacker Blanco got tackled by the keeper in the box (the keeper got his hand on the ball before making contact with Blanco but if Blanco had not tripped over the keeper he surely would have scored — I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that is a properly awarded penalty kick). Rivaldo easily equalized on the penalty kick.
There were other stretches of horrible AEK defending, including a lengthey period around the 37th minute when we were under a sustained threat from Panionios. During these periods, it was perhaps due simply to luck that we did not concede more goals.
There were a few bright spots, though they were few and far between. One came in the 39th minute, a nice sequence initiated by Kone who brought the ball up the middle, beat two defenders, passed the ball off to Ramos who crossed to Blanco who headed an assist to Lyberopoulos who headed it in for a 1-2 lead. THe good news is that Kone’s performance seemed to confirm that he has first team potential.
But that was it. The second half wore on drearily, with more poor defending from AEK and more time on the ball for Panionios (or so it seemed to me). Near the 90th minute, both teams had a man sent off and Panionios earned an equalizer in the first minute of injury time.
With this draw and Panathinaikos’s 3-1 win over Aris, we are confirmed for the UEFA Cup. Click here for the press on both games.
