Martins: “This is a deserved victory against AEK”
Olympiacos head coach Pedro Martins felt that the hosts deserved to win the Super League derby against AEK in Piraeus, but Nikos Kostenoglou thought otherwise.
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With the supporters inside the sold-out Karaiskakis Stadium creating a hot atmosphere, Olympiacos came flying out of the blocks against AEK, scoring in the ninth minute of proceedings as Ruben Semedo knocked the ball over the line at point blank range. Later on, Youssef El Arabi thought he had doubled Olympiacos’ advantage after a horrible AEK defensive mix-up, but the goal was ruled out for a foul. To their credit, AEK did eventually manage to gain a foothold in the game, passing up a few promising chances with David Simao’s rocket particularly going close. However, the final ball was always lacking, and Mohamed Camara ended the game as a contest in the 77th minute as he beat Panagiotis Tsintotas with a curling strike.
“I would like to congratulate my players, we played aggressive football against a team which fouled a lot,” beamed Pedro Martins. “Will only Olympiacos and PAOK contest the title? No, there are three teams in the race, and AEK are one of them. They are good, high-quality opponents. However, we were the more dominant team, not allowing AEK to threaten us a lot. We made a statement today, especially when you take our schedule into account. In my opinion, this is a deserved victory.”
“The video assistant referee system? When it’s used correctly, it is a great thing,” continued the Portuguese manager. “I don’t like to talk about the referees’ work. In comparison to last season, we are a much maturer team now with more experience and stability, and we have started to use our scoring opportunities more effectively. Our goals are clear: we want to win the league and perform well in Europe. How can we continue to cope with the schedule? With hard work.”
AEK manager Nikos Kostenoglou felt that the visitors deserved more based on their performance: “Until the second goal, we were very competitive,” revealed the 49-year-old. “We did not deserve to lose today, we pushed Olympiacos and that is something which is very hard to do here. Unfortunately, we failed to get the equaliser, and we lost our composure after the second Olympiacos goal. There will be playoffs after the regular season, we must continue and strive to win.”
“I think Vranjes was fine today,” replied Kostenoglou when asked about how the Olympiacos fans provoked the Bosnian centre-back. “He is human, but I think that he played well. The refereeing? We haven’t got any complaints, he did a good job. If we had scored a goal in the first half, this game would have been very different. We played well enough not to lose.”
Mohamed Camara, who sealed the victory for Olympiacos with a powerful effort, put more importance on the three points: “It’s more important that we won, I am playing to help the team win matches. Of course, it is nice to score, but the goal is to win. My season so far? I was very tired after a busy summer, but football has both good and bad moments. I believe that a better period is starting. My celebration? I have plenty of passion for Olympiacos and I want to make the fans happy.”
“This is a well-deserved victory,” stated Olympiacos winger Giorgos Masouras when speaking to Nova Sports. “Our pressure resulted in us achieving the victory. AEK were dangerous today, especially in the first half. I thought that they played well, but as the game progressed I thought that we easily saw it out. It seems that Olympiacos and PAOK are running away from the rest of the teams at the moment, especially when you look at the away form. The difficult schedule? We won two games and played well against Bayern Munich. We have done the best we could.”
AEK goalkeeper Panagiotis Tsintotas is now looking ahead to the upcoming Super League matches against Atromitos and Panathinaikos: “We were searching for the equalising goal, but Olympiacos made it 2-0 and that was it. In these derbies, you must have 100% focus, and we didn’t. We reacted to the first goal, but it wasn’t good enough. This defeat leaves us a long way behind the leaders, but there are playoffs this year. We have to earn two victories in the games against Atromitos and Panathinaikos.”
“We had one or two chances to equalise in the first half, before the match became more balanced in the second frame,” said AEK substitute David Simao. “I tried to add energy when I came on, but Olympiacos then made it 2-0 in their favour. Our game plan? AEK is a very big team, we don’t change our approach depending on other clubs. We have our own way of playing. If we could have equalised today, everything would have been different. There is a long road ahead of us.”
