Olympiakos and PAOK let their fans down

Greek teams had a particularly disappointing start to their European season this month, with the poor showings and eliminations of Olympiakos and PAOK, as only Aris managed to save some face for Greece.

There will be no representative from Greece in this season’s Champions League, as Olympiakos fell once again early at the qualifying rounds, this time to Maccabi Haifa, that stunned the Greek champion with a 4-0 thumping in Piraeus on Wednesday, to go through on a 5-1 aggregate score.

The Israeli team took advantage of a particularly poor Olympiakos and scored with Tjaronn Chery, Frantzdy Pierrot (twice) and Mohammad Abu Fani.

Olympiakos is now relegated to the Europa League, facing Slovan Bratislava, and will likely be with a new manager as Pedro Martins is on his way out after four years on the Reds’ bench.

In the Europa Conference League, PAOK was unable to overturn its 2-0 deficit when it hosted Levski in Thessaloniki on Thursday and drew 1-1 finishing the return leg with nine players. Ronaldo opened the score for Levski and Tiago Dantas equalized for PAOK, that had Douglas Augusto and Adelino Vieirinha sent off.

Aris had no such problems against Gomel. It followed its its first-leg triumph with a 2-1 win, once again in Thessaloniki as Gomel is a team from Belarus and UEFA has banned European matches from being held there. Andre Anthony Gray scored late in each half, while Giorgi Gogolashvili converted a penalty for Gomel.

In the next round Aris will face Maccabi Tel Aviv. Panathinaikos is also joining the action from the competition’s third qualifying round, meeting Slavia Prague.