The team, of Giorgos Donis disposes of a thousand ways to impress positively its fans and disappoint its rivals! This time they were victorious again, playing against PAS Gianina, succeeding to overcome. This was the first time for the team to win in the championship after letting in a goal, since the 31st of May 2017. It was in the last match day of the playoffs that although the ¨Greens¨ were losing 2-1 playing against PAOK, in Toumba, they finally won 3-2. This victory against PAS Gianina was the fifth in a raw of five matches, since the start of the championship.
Unfortunately the alerts about … natural disasters to be caused by “hurricane Zorbas” discouraged fans to come and create an ambience same to the one created in the game against Levadiakos, in the bleachers of the Olympic stadium, where only 5.000 fans were present.
Panathinaikos lined up in a 4-2-3-1 system and pressed its opponent from the very first moment in order to achieve a goal quickly. The massive defense of PAS kept the “Shamrock” way from scoring, as some lobs by Kourberlis and Insua were target-less. The unique moment the rivals threatened Panathinaikos’ posts was in the 23rd minute when they scored. As a matter of fact, this goal should be disallowed because Krizman, the scorer, committed a foul against goalkeeper Dioudis by impeding him to head the ball clear. This goal, though, gave Panathinaikos’ player the power to counterattack.
The “Greens” carried their opponents high, limiting them into their box and started “bombarding” the area. In one of these efforts, in the 44th minute, Tassos Hadjiyiovannis scored the equalizer reminding in a way how famous Giorgos Karagounis did it during Champions League match against Arsenal, in 2001. Tassos scored by a diving-header after caching the assist served by Koulibaly. The new score (1-1) gave a new stimulus to Panathinaikos who entered the second period committed to win! The victorious goal came in the 59th minute: it was created by the same player (Κoulibaly) but another one executed it(Μacheda). The Italian striker opened a … scoring account with the “Greens” after a nice shoot, showing just a small sample of his abilities.
In the 20th minute of the duel PAS took some risks as they played with several offensive footballers, but besides a chance by Mystakidis, they weren’t able to create any other threats for Dioudis’ goalposts.
PANATHINAIKOS: Dioudis, Koulibaly, Insua, Kolovetsios, Mavrommatis, Kourbelis, Donis, Hadjiyiovannis, Bouzoukis (66′ Staikos), Hadjitheodoridis (74′ Kabetsis), Macheda (77′ Pougouras).
PAS GIANINA:Vellidis, Boukouvalas, Lila, Michail, Tzimopoulos, Krizman, Tsikartski, Leo Baptist (58′ Athanassiadis), Vidal (77′ Mystakidis), Skondras (70′ Kouzik), Nikolias.
