The Day After

Well, its a day later and though the joy has not faded, some questions have begun to creep into sight.

Let’s have a look at Ferrer.  He subbed Blanco out for Manduca at the half.  This turned out to be an outstanding move, for in the first play of the half Manduca moved the ball up the field and crossed it perfectly to the feet of Nsaliwa directly in front of the goal. 1-0 AEK.

So far so good.  Then in the 75th minute, Ferrer substitutes Julio Cesar for Manu.  One lousy player for another, but Cesar has been inconsistent even at the best of times, so Ferrer can be forgiven for taking a while to figure out that Cesar just doesn’t seem to give two-shits about playing for AEK anymore.  Manu is another story.  Ferrer sees this guy as an integral part of his team.  He starts him for most, if not all, of our important games and he often leaves him in for the full 90.  Now, Manu actually had a decent game last night.  He passed better than I have ever seen before, he hustled and he almost scored on a solo-effort.  Don’t get me wrong, he is still all pace and little skill, but it was a relief to see him play so hard.  So, at the end of the day, I can’t be too down on Ferrer for using Manu and Cesar, but I am getting a little desperate to see young guys with creative skills like Pappas play more in the midfield.

Finally, Ferrer waited until the very last moment, the 89th minute to be exact, to take Rivaldo out and put Papastathopoulos in to secure the win. This after a very frightening 10 minutes in which Rivaldo and Ramos Silva looked exhausted and Boleslav threatened repeatedly, two shots hitting the woodwork.  To begin with, I would have rather seen Papastathopoulos start over Alves (who had just an average game).  Papa is in top form and has recently demonstrated that despite his young age, he is probably one of the five best player on AEK’s squad.  Alves and Dellas, the other CBs, are good too though, so I don’t want to make too much out of which two CBs Ferrer goes with in any given fixture.  But I do have a problem with Ferrer watching a terrifying and sustained attack for ten minutes before relieving an exhausted 35 year-old midfielder who played his heart out for the first 70 minutes.  Again, Pappas could have gone in.  Kone could have gone in.  Either one of them could have contributed much more than Rivaldo in the last ten minutes in keeping control of the midfield.  Instead we just hunkered down on defense and hoped and prayed they wouldn’t score.  But that’s not good football, and it’s no surprise that it was left to Morretto to save the day.  And he did.  He had several incredible saves in the last five minutes.  He alone is responsible for keeping the Czechs from equalizing.  I’m worried about the coaching as it concerns the midfield, but I am glad I got to see some pretty irrefutable evidence that we have two top-notch keepers on our squad.

There is a fairly good post-match piece by UEFA.com here and a slightly better article and Sporting Life here.

As this article shows, a lot of Spanish teams did well last night, including our Group C competitors Villareal who we play in Athens next week. Given these results, our chances of proceeding to the final 32 (the first three team from each group progress) now look like this:

If Mlada Boleslav win next week against Fiorentina and we lose, then goal differentials will determine who progresses.
If Mlada and Fiorentina draw and we either lose or draw , we progress!
If Fiorentina defeats Mlada (the most likely outcome), then we progress no matter what our result.
Also, if we actually defeat Villareal, we progress, regardless of the other outcomes.
Elfsborg is already eliminated.

Now, where we finish in our group (first, second, or third) determines how difficult a team we face in the next round, but, frankly, I’m too worried about progressing at all to expend the mental energy coming up with those permutations.