A Quick Summary

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:

AEK 2-0 Lamia

The improvement in fortunes under Kostenglou has continued with another 3 points following today’s win over Lamia, a win which brings us up to 5th place with 6 points (Olympiakos, PAOK, and Xanthi are all 3 for 3 so far).

Truth be told, it wasn’t a phenomenal game by any means, but it sounds like we did enough to control the match and make a couple of our chances count. From what I could make out on the radio, it seemed like though we managed to control the game for the most part, it was making any meaningful gain’s into Lamia’s box which we struggled with. Livaja stepped up when needed though, as he did last week, and was involved with both of our goals scored today (the first was a pass from Livaja which resulted in an own goal while the second was a Livaja free kick slotted into the net by Vranjes).

All in all a critical 3 points as we prepare for our critical test against PAOK in a couple week’s time. Before that though, we face Panaitolikos in Agrinio, a match which we really shouldn’t struggle with considering Panaitolikos currently sit second from last, one 0 points.

Progress on the stadium is continuing at a steady rate. This video shows some great aerial views over the stadium at sunrise this morning:

Summer Updates

Well its been quite a while since my last post and as would be expected by this point in the summer, quite a lot has happened. I suppose now would be as good a time as any to go over some of this summer’s developments up to this point:

A number of signings were made over the past few months, with some of the more notable ones listed below

• Giorgos Athanasiadis, 26 year old keeper who joins AEK from Asteras Tripolis. At the moment we still have both Barkas and Tsitsontas on the squad so I assume Athanasiadis will be playing for the second keeper spot. He is a fairly respected keeper in Greece at the moment so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him snatch that second spot sooner or later
• Paulinho, 28 year old right back who I assume will be Galo’s replacement.
• Vranjes has returned to AEK, as a one year loan from Anderlecht. Of course I would have preferred a transfer rather than simply a loan, but I’ll take it. We all know what he brings to the team, not to mention the love he has for the club should certainly help motivate the other players around him too
• David Simao, 29 year old midfielder joins us on a contract until 2022. Some of the notable clubs he’s played for in the past include Benfica and CSKA Sofia. I’ll admit I’m not especially familiar with him, but he seems to be a serious player with considerable experience so this should turn out to be a decent signing
• Francisco Geraldes, 24 year old on loan from Sporting for the season. He’s been with Sporting for a while now but seems to have spent most of his career on loan to various clubs throughout Europe.
• Milos Deletic, 25 year old forward who joins AEK on a contract until 2022. He’s probably the signing I’m most familiar with (aside from Vranjes) considering he’s spent the past three seasons with Larissa.
• Daniele Verde, 23 year old forward who has also signed until 2022. He’s been with Roma since 2014 but like Geraldes has spent most of his career on loan. This signing seemed to drag on for a while so I was glad when it was finally a done deal. Hopefully all the back and forth turns out to be worth it…
• Nelson Oliveira, 27 year old striker who has signed with us for two years. He was most recently with Norwich for the past three years and seemed to be a big part of their team for a while before seeming to have a falling out with management.

Aside from the signings, AEK also hired a new coach to replace Jimenez. Miguel Cardoso joined us at the end of May after spending last season managing Celta Vigo. He’s been in managerial positions since 1993, either as youth or assistant coaches, but only stepped up to head coach positions 2017. Way too early to tell what kind of an impact he’ll have with AEK, but he’ll have the chance to prove himself with AEK’s first competitive match of the season coming up in four day’s time against Romanian side Craiova.

Its looking like there’s a chance the match against Craiova, which will be our first Europa League qualifying match of the season, might be played in an empty stadium. Craiova’s match against Honved in the last round had to be halted following numerous fan incidents and I’m hearing that UEFA may be looking into possible punishments including a fan ban.

Aside from personnel changes, we of course unveiled new kits for this season earlier in the summer. I’m not thrilled with them, but they’re different and I guess they’re also not the worst I’ve seen:

Photo from AEKFC.GR

Lastly, the progress on the stadium continues to move on at an impressive rate. This video, shot this morning, nicely shows some of the progress that’s been made on the first section of the roof:

I was in Greece for a couple weeks this summer with my father and naturally, the first thing we did our first day in Athens was head straight to Nea Filadelfia to check out the stadium with our own eyes. It was an incredible site to see, especially considering last time I was there, the place was still an empty dirt pit filled with overgrown weeds. Needless to say, its going to be quite the site once completed.

The Fiesta We’ve All Been Waiting For

A fiesta that we’ve waited 24 years for, a fiesta that has been long overdue, finally Nea Filadelfia was able to celebrate the only way we know how. Flares, chanting, and a party that probably still lingers on the streets hours after the bus carrying the champions passed by.

The celebrations really started after our 1-0 win against Apollon Smyrnis, a game which technically was an away match though in reality was played in front of about ten thousand AEK supporters.

An open roof bus, painted specifically for this occasion, made its way from Rizoupoli stadium to Nea Filadelfia where it was, as expected, greeted by a sea of singing supporters. When I was re-watching some of the live coverage, people were estimating about thirty thousand supporters in the streets, and it certainly seemed that way from the video footage that I saw.

 

Its times like these when I would give anything to have the chance to be back in Greece. Its one thing to watch videos of this thousands of kilometers away but I truly cannot even imagine what it would have been like to be in Athens tonight. I’ve been around for some great moments, such as when we won the cup in 2011, but I have a feeling the atmosphere in Athens tonight would have been pretty unbelievable with the league now over, our basketball team in the Champions League final (tomorrow!) and the stadium on its way to being completed.

Now, as Melissanidis said earlier tonight, we look forward to more championships. With time, we might just be able to celebrate them in our new stadium before we know it!

Champions Again, 24 Years Later!

I know, I know, its not official yet as we’re still (!) waiting on the court case regarding the PAOK-AEK match in Toumba. But, its hart to not feel like we’re champions following the scenes that were a result of our 2-0 victory over Levadeiakos.

In front of 70,000 cheering and chanting supporters, we practically sealed our 12th Championship in history, and our first since the 1993-1994 season. Bakasetas was the hero today as he scored both goals, including one from the penalty spot. The highlight of the game though is when Mantalos made his way onto the pitch, 172 days since he last played a match for AEK after recovering from a serious knee injury.

Its amazing to think we’ve finally achieved this considering where we were playing not that long ago. As Tzanetopoulos said, the team has been dreaming about this moment from when they were playing in the 3rd division and it has finally happened!

Theres a lot that can be said about what happened today in Athens, but I’ll let some video footage do the talking.

I was relieved to see that the supporters in the stands didn’t cause any trouble during and after the match. I was sure that just a few flares or a few fans storming the pitch afterwards would have had some teams demanding some kind of punishment for AEK.

Instead of causing any trouble in the stadiums, our supporters left the more “rambunctious” celebrations for the streets of Nea Filadelfia.

The celebrations inside the locker room meanwhile were equally enthusiastic:

Theres not much that can be said really after a day like this. All I can say is that this team deserves credit. The players, the staff, Jimenez, Melissanidis, everyone has done an incredible job to get this far. We’ve all but won the league, we’re in the Cup Final, we were undefeated in the Europa League, its hard to remember a better time to be an AEK supporter in recent memory. Lets just hope the court case goes favorably for us so that we can well and truly host a fiesta like we did back in Nea Filadelfia!

Stadium Live Feed

After many months of construction and many requests by fans on various AEK sites, we finally have a live stream (two, in fact) of the ongoing construction in Nea Filadelfia. It took a while but I must say that its been worth the wait. The quality of the two streams are outstanding and are in real time with seemingly no lag.

I was watching earlier on and the place was alive with workers all around. What was especially amazing was how late work was taking place. Even around 5 PM local time for me (which would be 11 PM in Athens) I saw workers taking care of stuff under the floodlights. They say the stadium should be built within a year and at this rate I might actually believe it.

The stream can be found here, but they can also be watched directly on YouTube: https://www.agiasofia.today

In other news (since we still don’t have any games to report on), I have something to report that may be of interest to any AEK supporters in England. England’s National Football Museum, located in Manchester, is currently displaying historic jerseys from around the world. One of the jerseys on display is an AEK jersey, specifically a jersey from the 1998-1999 season worn by Paris Zoubourlis. Its a beautiful kit, one of many beautiful jerseys put out by Kappa from the mid to late 90s.

More info on the museum itself can be found here: http://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com

Atromitos 1-1 AEK

So as you may have seen already, and as was mentioned in a comment in a previous point, the all important PAOK-Oly game was never played. I’m sure it comes as no surprise too that the reason was once again fan trouble from the PAOK fans.

Why would I bring this up in a post about a game between AEK and Atromitos? Well the possible implications in our hunt for the title could end up being decisive. Nothing is determined for sure yet but it seems quite possible that PAOK could have 3 points deducted, and will likely play a couple games without supporters. The 3 point deduction is huge as it drops PAOK 2 points below us and places us alone in 1st. Whats frustrating about today’s game is had we managed to hold on to our 1-0 lead, we would have had the chance be even further ahead of PAOK before we play them in a game where they likely won’t have any home support. Its a huge opportunity lost but at the end of the day I can’t say I’m surprised. Atromitos are never an easy team to face and afterall they were the last team to beat us in all competitions back in October of 2017. It didn’t help that fatigue has clearly started to get the best of us, resulting in a game where we often failed to control the pace for extended periods of time.

Unfortunately the disappointment didn’t end with the result itself. Livaja picked up a yellow meaning he will have to miss two of the next four games: Panionios, PAOK, Panathinaikos, and Platanias. On top of that, Araujo, Simoes, and Hult all picked up injuries during the game but I’m not sure yet whether any of them are particularly serious.

Highlights of today’s game are below, featuring Araujo’s goal to make it 1-0 for AEK and Warda’s beauty to tie it for the home team.

 

For something a little more uplifting, even if today’s result isn’t the end of the world, take a look at this video showing the progress being made in Nea Filadelfia. Its an exciting time to be an AEK fan as things are actually starting to come together regarding the stadium.

AEK 3-0 PAOK

Araujo OE OE OE

I’ve always had a “fascination” with Argentina. I’ve never been there, but its always been high on my list of places to visit. I have to be honest though and admit that part of the reason I’ve been interested in the country for so many years now though is simply the fact that we’ve some incredible football players from Argentina play for AEK. Thats not to say that every Argentinian we’ve had play for us has been phenomenal. But the thing is, when they’re good, they’re really good. First Scocco, and now Araujo, a player who’s precence on the pitch has elevated the team to a whole new level.

Its not just that he can score, but he also the fact that he makes some great plays and brings so much energy to our attacks. Hes the kind of player that most defenses simply can’t handle, just like Scocco was back in the day. Today was the perfect example of it; when someone like Araujo is in form, hes untouchable.

Now before I go on any further about Araujo, I do have credit to the rest of the team. We played a pretty good game and though PAOK did have a few chances, we were solid overall. Perhaps the only complaint I could have had really about our performance was the fact that we sometimes went large stretches of time without really dictating the pace, but I guess its natural to see some of that urgency ease off when you score so early (as we did today with Araujo opening the scoring just 49 seconds into the game).

Barkas was phenomenal, making a number of key saves to keep us ahead. The same could be said about Glykos as well, as he made some fantastic saves to keep PAOK in the game when the score was still 1-0. Its safe to say that had he not been so sharp today, the score could have been a lot higher, a lot earlier on.

Along with Araujo, our entire offense and midfield was excellent. Simoes and Johansson were constantly pressing and Johansson especially showed so much confidence in some of the balls he played. Mantalos also helped to control the pace of the game while both Ajdarevic and Vargas had some great chances to put us ahead even further.

Something worth noting from this game too was the fact that this was Aravidis’ first match in months. It didn’t take him long to make his presence felt again as he managed to sneak the 3rd goal in just before the end.

Today’s win, aside from resulting in a well earned derby victory, also brought us back into 5th place after our 1-1 draw against Panionios earlier in the week. Things are starting to get interesting too as there are now only 5 points separating 7th and 3rd place. We currently occupy 5th but with a win against PAO in two weeks time, we could see ourselves jumping up to 4th fairly soon.

As has been the case for a while now, we still remain undefeated under Jimenez, 12 games after he took over. Our current goals scored under Jimenez adds up to 29, while we’ve only conceeded 3… Is that even possible? Looking at our results, it seems to be the case, but I have a hard time believing that considering our form before Jimenez returned.

Goals can be watched below. Araujo’s second is stunning, the kind of shot that couldn’t be more perfect. All I can say is that I hope Melissanidis gives Araujo whatever he needs to make him stay, though its safe to say some other teams very well might show some interest.

Its also worth noting that before the game, Original21 organized a large march in Nea Filadelfeia to show some support for our eventual return home to where we belong. Sounded like it was a great time with singing, flares, and banners, but whether it will change anything remains to be seen. All I know is that this mayor is proving to be even more stubborn than I thought. I just hope he realizes that over 90 years of history in Nea Filadelfeia can’t erased with one term as mayor.

Lets hope for many marches like this and that maybe some day we’ll be marching to our stadium once again.

AEK-Iraklis for the Round of 8

Well it looks like my “wish” came true and we’ll be playing Iraklis in the next round of the cup. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think these games will be easy, no game at this stage of the cup is ever easy, but I’d certainly rather we play Iraklis than any of the other teams we could have been drawn against.

The matchups that were drawn today include:

AEK – Iraklis

PAO – Atromitos

Olympiakos – Asteras Tripolis

Panionios – PAOK

Interesting that there were no real derbies following the draw, but it certainly means that the quarter finals will be interesting. With the possibility of the last four teams being AEK, Olympiakos, PAO, and PAOK, there could very well be some good matches coming up. Also worth noting is that until now, AEK have faced Iraklis eight times in the Cup. Of those eight times, Iraklis advanced following the first two meetings but since then, AEK has advanced every time. I’m not superstitious, and I know as well as anyone that anything can happen in football, but its not a bad stat to have on our side.

Some videos from previous AEK-Iraklis games. First video is worth watching for the footage of Nea Filadelfia alone. Hopefully some day we’ll be back there, where we belong.

 

Good and Bad News Today

I suppose I’ll start off with the bad for now. Our punishment for the events that took place towards the end of our match with Olympiakos was announced, and essentially it comes down to a fine (I believe somewhere around 15,000 euros but I could be quite a ways off with that) and a three point deduction. The three point deduction is unfortunate, but I feel like it could have been worse. Thankfully the impact is minimal since we have such a huge lead, and according to one article I read it should only end up meaning a point less for us come playoff time. I remember reading an article a couple weeks ago which suggested the point deduction might take effect next season, which I feel would have been a much bigger blow to us, so in a way I’m somewhat relieved by this.

The good news for today is that we have taken some huge steps forward with regards to the stadium. The StE, which I believe refers to the Council of State, has from what I understand granted us permission for our plans for the stadium. I could be wrong regarding what specifically the announcement from the council said, but the impression I got was that this was a huge victory for the team. I’m not sure if this essentially eliminates the hurdles we were facing from the municipality of Nea Filadelfeia, but I’m hoping either way we can see some sort of start to the construction one way or another!