Its been quite a while since I last posted here – to be honest, I haven’t really been able to watch any of our games this season and for the most part have only been following play-by-plays and radio broadcasts. That’s not to say a lot hasn’t happened since my last post though. No, we’re not champions; actually it wasn’t a great season at all truth be told, but there are some positives signs for the future of the club. To re-cap, here’s a summary of what’s happened so far this season until now:
- After Kostenoglou took over for Cardoso, we did eventually sign a new coach: Italian Massimo Carrera. Not the most experienced coach we’ve seen, but that didn’t worry me. After all, we’ve had some fairly experienced coaches in the past who didn’t always amount to much. In either case, the players have said great things about his coaching style (and some awful things about Cardodo’s style since his departure). The team has, for the most part, played quite well under Carrera and I suspect that with a full summer to prepare and a few more signings, we could do good things with him. Since Carrera took over, in the league we won 9, drew 3, and lost 1; not amazing, but enough to secure our spot in 3rd place. Realistically we weren’t going to beat Olympiakos in the standings this season, though if we had Carrera from the start, we might have had a chance of finishing above PAOK.
- One noteworthy singing during the Winter transfer window was the singing of Araujo on loan from Las Palmas. He’s been a solid player since he’s been back and its safe to say that most AEK fans will hope Melissanidis does what he can to sign him on for at least a few seasons.
- The league has ended, with AEK in 3rd and 8 points behind PAOK. Having said that, PAOK, along with Xanthi, was handed a point deduction due to co-ownership rules between the two teams being broken. That means that PAOK drop to just 1 point above AEK which should put us in a good position to overtake them in the playoffs.
- Speaking of playoffs, they begin next weekend with AEK facing Panathinaikos on the 15th of March.
- Other playoffs news: I was just reading that Greece has put measures into place to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, which include not allowing spectators to sporting events. This means that, unfortunately, there will be no fans in attendance for our first playoff game against Panathinaikos.
- We’ve made some progress in the Cup, making it to the semi-finals so far and beating Aris 2-1 in the first leg. Shaky score going into the second leg, but we’ve already beaten them up north once this season and should have a good chance at doing enough to make it to the finals.
- Some noteworthy basketball news, AEK legend Nikos Zisis has returned to the club after 15 years abroad. Hes made an impact since joining with some great performances until now and its clear he’ll still have more to give to the club.
- Of course, its always worth showing some updated footage on the progress of our stadium. This video, shot yesterday, might be one of my favourites yet:
- Lastly, I’d like to end on something that put a huge smile on my face. Stadium related again, this was some footage shot a few weeks ago when some supporters made their way into the stadium, and of course, started doing what they do best:
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