Terrible scenes broke out at the Olympic Stadium on Tuesday night, as the Ajax supporters who travelled to Athens to watch their team’s attempt to seal on of the two top spots of Group E of the Champions League came under attack by angry AEK hooligans.

Some of them were injured when a flare was tossed over to their side by a mindless fan of the home team and there were even petrol bombs spotted during the incidents.

The riot police that was ordered to come in to help quell things actually only made matters worse, as images show some of the officers attacking the Dutch supporters.

Additionally, there were claims on Twitter about hooded men awaiting the Amsterdam team’s supporters at Eirini train station, which leads to the Olympic Stadium, and attempting to strike them with crowbars.

The cause of the riots was apparently the presence of some Panathinaikos fans among those who came from the Netherlands, with whom AEK have a bitter rivalry.

These horrific incidents come just a few days after the Greek national team played in front of a crowd sporting the flag of the Black Sun of the SS that UEFA is currently investigating and it will be interesting to see how far the European Committee’s tolerance will go with the situation in Greek football.

After the riots died down, it was time for the attention to turn where it was initially supposed to be focused on: the pitch.

With AEK manager Marinos Ouzounidis being without the services of three of his most important players (Bakasetas, Lambropoulos and Simoes will not be renewing their contracts with the club), things already seemed difficult.

And it proved to be an impossible task, despite managing to keep the Dutch champions out of their area for most of the first half.

It was Marko Livaja’s overeagerness that cost AEK the game, as the striker from Croatia conceded a penalty to Ajax on the 67th minute after handling the ball to block a shot by Klaas Jan-Huntelaar.

As if that wasn’t enough, the forward received his marching orders since he had already been booked earlier on.

Marko Tadic stepped up to calmly give his team the goal they had been looking for and put AEK on the back seat.

The home side weren’t able to handle the pressure being reduced down to ten men and conceded again just four minutes later, after a clever assist by Huntelaar set up Tadic yet again for his and his team’s second goal of the night.

This result of course means that AEK are mathematically disqualified from all European competitions, despite Benfica’s 5-1 loss to Bayern as they cannot cover the four point margin that separates them from the Portuguese team with just one game remaining.

Marinos Ouzounidis and his players will have a lot to think about as their European journey comes to an early end.