Greek Super League Champion Olympiakos took a big step towards progressing to the Champions League play-off round, after a 3-1 away win at Partizan Belgrade on Wednesday morning.
The match took place under heightened security due to tension between rival supporters arising from the strong alliance between Olympiakos ultra fans and Partizan’s arch rival Red Star Belgrade. Such were the concerns that both clubs agreed to relinquish their away ticket allocations, before the two legged third round qualifying tie.
However the tension at the ground failed to inhibit Olympiakos striker El Fardou Ben Nabouhane, who opened the scoring with a sharp finish after an assist from attacking midfielder Marko Marin, in just the sixth minute.
Partizan struck back almost immediately through tall Cameroonian striker Leandrre Tawamba. The score remained tied for almost another hour before Ben Naboujane broke the deadlock with a spectacular goal from distance.
With the home team increasingly desperate to find a late equalizer, Olympiakos took advantage of a stretched Partizan defence through Nigerian forward Emmanuel Emmineke who added a third goal in stoppage time.
After the match Olympiakos’s new coach Besnik Hasi commented:
“Nothing is over yet. We still have another 90 minutes of a difficult encounter in Karaiskakis. We must also not forget that this is our first official match, after our last on April 30th. We had a plan, we knew what we wanted to do, we did it and it’s great we scored 3 goals.”
“Partizan was better from 35′ until 40′ in the first half. Although we made a good start, we suffered a quick equalizer by our opponent. We also lost a very important player before the match, that is Fortounis, and we also had many injured players. I think what made the difference was our effective blocking-out of Partizan’s forwards. They actually couldn’t connect and I think this was the element that made the difference and enabled us to win the match.”
“I am satisfied with Ben who scored twice, however I have to admit the entire side played well and thus we earned the victory. I do not want to name players, but everybody followed the plan and did what they had to do”.
Whilst Olympiakos takes a valuable two goal lead into the home leg in Piraeus on August 2nd, the other Greek Super League team trying to qualify for the Champions League play-offs, AEK, takes a two goal deficit into its second leg match against CSKA Moskow.
AEK’s hopes of qualifying for the play off round of the Champions League took a nosedive following its 2-0 defeat at home to CSKA Mosko in the first leg. AEK conceded to set piece moves either side of the break, the first to an Alan Dzageov header on the stroke of half time and the second to a 56th minute Pontus Weinbloom header.
