Kavala vs Panathinaikos 2-2 ; Die Hard

By: Minas | October 20th, 2009

619959

After 6 wins in 6 matches, Kavala was our next opponent.

I expected that it would be a difficult match. I was wrong. It was a very difficult match, and we were lucky that we didn’t lose.

Let’s start from the beginning. As expected, Ten Kate decided to rest some players. Those were Karagounis,Salpingidis and Gilberto. The pitch was in bad condition due to the rain.

Around 4000 Panathinaikos fans were at the stadium, but they saw a pretty bad first half from their team. We were incredibly awful, while Kavala had some chances to score. And they managed to score actually, with Onwachi ( 21′, 43′). Our defense was awful (as usual),while Katsouranis and Simao were bad as well. When the first half ended, no one hoped that we would even take one point from this match.

In the second half, our coach substituted Bjarsmyr (who probably made his worst game with Panathinaikos’ jersey this Sunday) and Simao with Karagounis and Salpingidis. After these changes, we became more aggresive, and created some chances. 11 minutes after the second half started, Katsouranis scored. There were still 30+ minutes, plus we were playing much better in the second half, so everyone hoped that we could win this game after all.

Karagounis and Salpingidis lost 2 big chances to score, while Kavala decided to attack with counter-attacks. They also lost some chances to score another one goal and finish the game. Everyone thought that it was over, and we were going to lose, but Cisse’s header at injury time helped us take one point.

Happy End or not? Well, on the one hand, if we want to win the league, we must win matches with newly-promoted teams. On the other hand, Kavala is a good team (Olympiakos also drew with them), and it’s better to take one point instead of zero, isn’t it? The truth is that we must improve much more if we want to win the Superleague.

Next game agaisnt Sturm Graz , on Thursday.

Match Highlights