PAOK sinks in the Danube while Olympiakos cruises to victory

Olympiakos took another leap toward qualifying from its Europa League group through an emphatic win over Dudelange at home on Thursday, as PAOK suffered another reverse at the hands of Vidi, this time in Budapest.

The Reds defeated their visitors from Luxembourg with a 5-1 score, having led 4-0 from the first half.

It was a night of Greek scorers for Olympiakos, who had Costas Fortounis on target twice and Vassilis Torosidis, Lazaros Christodoulopoulos and Yiannis Fetfatzidis once each, although UEFA credited the last goal to Ahmed Hassan who appeared to try and make contact with the ball as it was crossing the goal line.

Olympiakos’s fifth goal came just over a minute after Dudelange’s consolation by Danel Sinani, the first goal by the Luxembourg club in the group stage.

Olympiakos is now on seven points from four games and will next visit Betis in Spain. Betis is on eight and AC Milan also has seven. Dudelange has not yet got off the mark.

PAOK has practically blown its chances of graduating from the group stage as it lost to Vidi for the second time in two weeks, this time 1-0 in Budapest.

For PAOK to qualify it will need to gather four more points than Vidi in the last couple of games, which means that the Thessaloniki side must not lose at Chelsea on November 29.

On Thursday the Greek league leader was fairly poor in its final effort and was unable to respond to the goal by the Hungarian champion on the 50th minute with Georgi Milanov.

PAOK remained on three points, the same as BATE Borisov, while Vidi is on six and Chelsea has 12.