Draw in Athens derby, as Olympiakos scrapes past Aris

Olympiakos beat Aris and maintained its 12-point advantage at the top of the Super League table at the start of the play-offs on Sunday, as PAOK edged out PAS Giannina, while the Athens derby involving Panathinaikos and AEK ended in a draw.

Olympiakos scraped past Aris at home with a 2-1 result, needing a late penalty to overcome the team that just a week earlier had beaten it at the end of the regular season.

After missing a penalty, with Aris keeper Julian Cuesta beating Youssef El-Arabi, the Reds opened the score with Pape Cisse. Badou Ndiaye equalized for Aris, but El-Arabi made amends for his first-half penalty miss as he scored the winner from the spot five minutes from time.

At the Apostolos Nikolaidis Stadium of Athens, Panathinaikos and AEK shared a 1-1 draw that will leave AEK the happier of the two even though it had several more chances to score. Aitor gave the Greens an early lead, but AEK equalized with a penalty kick in injury time by Nordin Amrabat.

PAOK appeared rather tired three days after its first leg against Belgian side Ghent for the Europa Conference League but still got to win 1-0 at home against PAS Giannina thanks to an injury-time goal by Chuba Akpom.

The Super League play-outs, involving the other eight teams of the division, will start next Saturday, on March 19.