Olympiakos denied at Livadia while Iraklis leaps to safety

Levadiakos prevented Olympiakos from celebrating another league title on Sunday, but a draw at home with PAS Giannina on April 23 will suffice for the Reds to clinch it mathematically.

Back in November Olympiakos had opened a huge gap at the top of the table and its fans chanted “the championship has finished from November”. It hadn’t and it still hasn’t, and it’s almost Easter.

The slump in Olympiakos’s performances continued on Sunday as the Reds fielded an experimental team at Livadia and had to wait until the 89th minute for Oscar Cardozo to equalize (1-1) Levadiakos’s goal from the first half via Stelios Vassiliou who made the most of a comedy of errors in the Olympiakos defense.

The Reds – who should have got a penalty in their favor a few minutes before the equalizer – are now six points ahead of PAOK with two games left to play. For Levadiakos the draw is simply not good enough as, along with the triumph of Iraklis at PAS Giannina with a 2-1 score, it means the Livadia club is now in the drop zone, two points from safety.

PAOK maintained its mathematical hopes of snatching the title from Olympiakos alive beating the ghost of Panathinaikos 3-0 in Thessaloniki, in a result that was actually flattering for the Greens the way the game went.

The two teams will meet again on Wednesday for the Cup in Athens and Panathinaikos chose to filed a second-string team at Toumba against a PAOK that went out with all guns blazing. By the 35th minute PAOK had already scored via Pedro Henrique, Marin Leovac and Evgen Shakhov, and deserved more in the rest of the game.

Panionios has climbed up to third again, above Panathinaikos, after drawing at home with Platanias 1-1 as a Ben Mohamed penalty kick canceled out Giorgos Giakoumakis’s goal for the Hania team.

AEK has all but clinched the last play-off spot thrashing Kerkyra 5-0 at home: Tassos Bakasetas and Tomas Pekhart scored a brace each, with the other goal coming from Didac Vila.

In Sunday’s other games Atromitos shared a goalless draw with Larissa, as did Asteras Tripolis with Xanthi, while Panetolikos defeated all-but-relegated Veria 1-0.