Aris-Olympiakos 1-1: “Block” in Thessaloniki for Piraeus, they lost ground for the title

Olympiacos dropped two valuable points in its attempt to win the championship, as in the 7th matchday of the Play Off of the Super League championship, it was “stuck” in a 1-1 draw with Aris at “Kleanthis Vikelidis”.

The home team opened the scoring with Loren Moron (48′) only for Zelson Martins to “reply” immediately (53′), but they could not find the winning goal that would have brought them, at least, above the third PAOK.

The “red and whites” threatened first, with Ayoub El Kaabi forcing Julian Cuesta into action in the 5th minute. Three minutes later, Stefan Jovetic beat the Spanish goalkeeper, but at the start of the visitors’ counter-attack there was a foul by Martins on Quique Saverio. Rade Obrenovic, after the intervention of VAR (Mattei Jug and Thanasis Kollias), made an on-field review, canceling the goal and giving a yellow card to the Portuguese winger of Olympiakos.

Trying to capitalize on the turmoil, Aris came close to scoring, with Davide Carmo and Vitente Ibora putting up a wall to Moron and Saverio’s efforts respectively. Five minutes of pressure from Piraeus followed, with Cuesta stopping Santiago Ese’s shot (21′) and Jovetic’s header (24′) while the crossbar stopped Ibora’s powerful header (25′).

The home team equalized the match, without creating or losing any great chance, except for a shot by Yiannis Fetfatzidis, but just as easily they kept their opponents away from Questa’s area. Until the stoppage time of the first half, when a strange phase happened: Moses Odubajo tried to clear, the ball hit El Kaabi and then the post, but did not cross the goal line.

The second half started with goals – and two in fact. Initially, the “yellow and black” scored, with Moron taking advantage of the mistake of Andreas-Richardos Doi and placing Konstantinos Tzolakis for 1-0. The joy of the home team, however, lasted only five minutes. Kostas Fortounis made the move and passed to Martins, with the Portuguese leveling at 1-1.

In fact, the Olympiakos scorer could have scored a second goal in the 58th minute, but he was beaten this time by Questa. Somewhere there, the two coaches started their interventions, but the rhythm of the match also broke down. The next good moment came in the 74th minute and it was El Kaabi’s shot that went over the bar, with Jose Luis Mendiliber making his team as aggressive as possible.

This had the consequence of there being gaps at the back, with Moron, however, at the beginning of the delays not seeing his unmarked teammates next to him and ending his effort lifelessly. The 1-1 remained until the end, with Olympiakos going to 67 points, five below AEK, four behind Panathinaikos and one behind PAOK. Aris, on the other hand, put a brake on the negative streak of four defeats.

Aris-Olympiakos 1-1

ARIS (Akis Manzios): Questa, Odubajo, Montoya, Brambets, Fabiano, Embodo, Darinda (90’+3′ Rose), Suleimanov, Fetfatzidis (60′ Manu Garcia), Saverio (60′ Zamora), Moron.

OLYMPIACOS (Jose Luis Mendiliber): Tzolakis, Ortega, Fortunis, Ibora, El Kaabi (87′ El Arabi), Martins (79′ Navarro), Carmo, Jovetic (68′ Podense), Rodiney, Ese (68′ Ciquinho), Doi .

*History written by Julian Cuesta. With his participation against Olympiakos, the Spanish goalkeeper reached 188 appearances for Aris, overtaking Artur Lekbelo who topped the list of foreign players with the most appearances.

RES-EMP