Jimenez wants Iraklis striker Karim Soltani to strenghten the AEK offense, reports French newspaper Le Buteur. The 26 year old Frenchman came to Iraklis at the beginning of this season from ADO Den Haag (The Hague) and signed a one year contract.
Soltani never meant to stay very long with Iraklis. Earlier this month he said: “I’ve signed a one year contract and would like to move a level up here in Greece”. Due to his one year contract selling Solani now is Iraklis only option to get some money for him.
Soltani played in The Netherlands since 2005, first for VVV Venlo and later for ADO Den Haag, both clubs that had to struggle to stay in the Dutch top league. Found some footage of him already in the right club colours 😉
The draw for the quarter finals of the Greek cup has been made and AEK has been paired with our cross town rivals,Pao.Both games will be played at the OAKA,the first on the 19th of January.This will be classified as a home game for Pao.The return leg is on the 2nd of February and is our home tie.
The remaining fixtures are as follows:-Atromitos Athens v Diagoras or Ethnikos Asteras ,Kerkyra or Iraklis v Olympiakos Volou and finally Olympiakos v Paok.
Our opponents in the Semi-Finals,once we’ve taken care of the Green Rabbits,will be the victor of Olympiakos v Paok.Bring It On!
AEK’S Australian International Nathan Burns will be leaving Greece shortly to join up with the Australian team,as they prepare for the 2011 Asian Cup in Qatar.He will be missing for approximately 1 month as Australia are one of the favourites and are expected to do well in this tournament.
Burns had this to say about his time at AEK,to an Australian website:-“This is shaping as a very good season for me,” Burns said shortly after helping AEK crush Larissa 4-0 away in a Greek Cup game.”I’ve taken part in every league game so far, most of them as a starter so I am very much in the coach’s plans.
“I’m playing on the right wing at the moment but I sometimes drift to the left to keep defenders on their toes.
“Wing play is hard but I’m enjoying it because there is more room on the flanks and I can use my speed and dribbling skills, which is probably why they want me to play there.
“However if you play as an out-and-out striker you tend to score more goals.
“The new coach (Manuel Jimenez, the former Sevilla boss who replaced Dusan Bajevic three months ago) has given me a lot of confidence. He’s probably one of the best coaches I have ever worked with and I’m improving. “I’ve played my best football in the Europa League and we were in with a chance of qualifying for the next phase until the last game but we lost to a very good Zenit St Petersburg team.
“Playing on this stage is a big honour for a footballer”.
Good luck Nathan,hopefully you return a better player still and start banging in some goals for AEK!
To all our readers and AEK fans out there, Merry Christmas (and if you celebrate something else or nothing at all, enjoy the Holidays) ! Hopefully everyone enjoys a relaxing and safe holiday period before the second half of the season starts again.
Let’s hope for a cup this year, and if all goes well, maybe we’ll even see construction start in Nea Filadelfia (as unlikely as it may be)!
We got a good win in the Greek Cup, 0-4 at Larissa. Didn’t see a lot of the game due to a bad stream and something called work. Did get the goals for you though. First one came from Blanco, Georgeas scored the second, Djebbour the third just after he got into a couple of unfriendly confrontations with some opponents (what a way to react) and finally Manolas made it 0-4.
At the end of the game our players had to run off the court because Larissa fans were throwing all kinds of fireworks on the pitch.
AEK’S trip north turned into a nightmare once again for the fans who traveled.Another very poor 1st half,not one chance created,poor passing and movement and a lack of urgency.Iraklis scored through a corner when Manolas lost his man.Inexperienced defending1
The 2nd half saw us push further forward,looking for an equalizer.Don’t understand why we couldn’t start like that in the 1st,but for all the possession we had,once again,few if any clear cut chances.
There are players on the field who should not be in an AEK jersey.Plain and simple.Won’t mention names but if you have been following closely lately,there’s not many who can claim that they should be an AEK player.
Let’s forget this game as quickly as possible.All players are on notice,January transfer window just around the corner.Hopefully something can fire the team up for our trip to Larisa and the cup game against the locals Thursday night.
Europe is over for us once again yet things could have so easily gone the other way!
We played a well fought match and the passion was very obviously there from our players. Throughout the entire first half they pressured and never gave up chasing the ball. Our passing was smooth, players looked calm and collected when under pressure in the attack, and things really were going well for us for the first 40 minutes or so. We managed to force a number of corners, we were coming close, yet our finishing in front of goal was poor and we were generally not as tight as we needed to be during our scoring chances.
Things started looking even better however as AEK were rewarded a penalty after Scocco was taken down in the box. Not too long before half time, it was a great opportunity to make our mark on the game. Blanco, unfortunately, failed to convert though and instead sent the ball over the net.
To make things worse Zenit score the game’s first goal after a weak counter attack, one which was a result of a poor pass from Liberopoulos. And this, only minutes before half time.
The second half was much the same though it was clear the goal took some spirit out of our guys. Jimenez tried some changes such as bringing on Burn’s and putting Diop on for Dellas though the subs had little impact. We couldn’t finish, we couldn’t produce in front of the net, and we paid for this as Zenit were soon up 2-0 and ended the game with a third to make it 3-0. The result meant only a loss for Anderlecht would have got us through, however they were more successful than us and ended up with a 2-0 win.
Another season and Europe is over for us. I know we haven’t had as much success as we would have liked these past few years, but this particular loss hurts almost as much as that unfortunate draw with Anderlecht four seasons ago. If only Blanco had scored the penalty things would have very likely ended differently. We were in control until then and had our own fate in our hands, even a draw would have seen us through.
Attendance was a little less than 30,000 from what I hear and despite the cold and general strike, a match as important as this should have drawn a better crowd. An extra boost from our fans may have given the players the last bit of inspiration they lacked on the pitch, but the atmosphere I heard sounded like a pretty good one. However, games like these emphasize so strongly the fact that we urgently need our own stadium, one where opponents would never feel safe or comfortable on nights like these.
Heartbreaking, to say the least! After a 45 minutes dominated by AEK, great support from our fans, lovely football, what do we get?? A missed penalty by Blanco and a counter attack goal for Zenit. To be honest I can’t really describe what I feel right now… maybe a little anger, disappointment. And to make matters worse Anderlecht are winning 2-0 (no surprise there) which means we must score a goal, otherwise the round of the 32 will be nothing but a dream for us. PAOK and Aris have already advanced, but it looks like it will be a difficult task for us to do the same.
We can’t give up hope yet though, we played some very nice football in the first and could have easily been up by a goal or two had we been a bit tighter in the box… we can do this!! FORZA AEKARA!!!
Lovely 4-0 score, Blanco (twice), Libe, and DELLAS all on the scoreboard, such a great site to see! Blanco’s form has been incredible lately and now that Zorro is back it feels like a day hasn’t passed since three years ago.
Unfortunately, we still sit a fair bit back from the top. However, what is important is that we took care of getting a positive result against a team who has always been a bit of a struggle for us. We didn’t play the best football we’ve seen all season long, but we turned things on when we needed to, took advantage of having an extra player, and made sure didn’t slip points like we did last week.
Arabatzis started in net and did well. He’s been looking quite solid in the air lately, rarely fails when he commits to the ball and I can’t complain with him at all. We needed him to be in top form seeing as Larissa came to the game with the intention of picking up some points. They created a number of decent chances, particularly in the first, which fortunately for us resulted in nothing.
I’m going to hold back on commenting much on individual players since my stream wasn’t the greatest, but I did notice a huge improvement in our play when Lagos and Kafes came on in exchange for Leonardo and Scocco. Scocco was busy upfront from what I saw, though the addition of Kafes and Lagos to the match seemed to improve our attack as a whole. Leonardo created little from what I saw, but I did miss alot so I don’t want to be too hard on the guy.
The referee was horrendous today, to the point where I was starting to feel quite outraged (well, not quite but I was certainly irritated). I can only imagine what everyone in the stadium was feeling. Unfortunately, only around 6,000 showed up for the match however as it was a very cold weekend in Athens (from the pictures I saw it looks like they received a decent amount of snow for so early in December). Hopefully we’ll see a better attendance figure at the match with Zenit, despite the late start time of 10:00 at night (well done UEFA, well done).
Also, it’s worth noting that Jimenez was kicked out of the match today and forced to watch much of it from the stands. He was off when the substitutions were made however it looked like he was still contacting his assistants on the pitch.
So, a decent performance, yet a fantastic result. Hopefully this gives us a confidence boost ahead of our critical match with Zenit!
As always, leave comments below. I would appreciate any as it is hard to watch these matches with such poor streams available!
Half time and were up 1-0 thanks to a… you guessed it… goal by Zorro! He’s back!
Pretty dull performance by us. I wouldn’t say we were playing poor out there, but we really need to lift things up if we’re gonna hope for a result against St.Petersburg this week. Scocco and Leo had good opportunities in front of goal which resulted in little.
Referee has, from what I’ve been seeing, calling way too much! Not that this is anything new in our league, but we can’t touch a player today without getting a foul!
1-0 is nothing to settle on just yet when facing Larissa, they’ve looked a little dangerous the times they made it into our box, and unless we score more the game will go either way.
Oly is leading at half time and guess what, another penalty for them. Haven’t seen the play yet so it could be a fair call but I really wonder how many penalties this team is going to receive this season.
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