In the early hours of Thursday, PAOK’s mission returned to Thessaloniki and everything now revolves around the second Conference League quarter-final against Marseille.
With the 2-1 loss to Velontrom but alive hopes of qualifying, PAOK returned to Thessaloniki in the early hours of the morning and Razvan Lutsescu will immediately start preparations for the second quarter-finals with his players after a few hours of rest with Marseille in toumba In addition, they have the opportunity to concentrate exclusively on next Thursday’s game without being obliged to play in the Super League Interwetten.
Logically, in the Dikefalos camp there is relative satisfaction with the reaction in the second half of the game in France and above all with the fact that the qualification for the semi-finals of the Conference League is now being counted in Toumba. From the moment the French were leading 2-0 at the end of the first 45 minutes, PAOK’s performance to leave Marseille with the extremely manageable result gives Lucescu and his players the belief that the rematch can be different.
That belief is reinforced by the image of PAOK in the second half of Thursday’s quarterfinals. It was the period when the Greek team managed to keep possession better and use the momentum of Omar El Kantouri’s goal to level the game until Alexandros Paschalakis took action.
Waiting for UEFA
The match is part of the next day of PAOK. The second point, also important, is the organization of Thursday’s game so as not to repeat Marseille’s mishaps.
France may have come to terms with Razvan Lucescu – given that his comments about the absence of Marseille fans in Thessaloniki were ominous – but the truth is that those in charge of Marseille, and in particular the people of UEFA (who host the police report) are very cautious about the possibility of finding guest fans in Toumba.
The local police do not appear to make the chaos that reigned in the city and Velontrom for 48 hours their own at PAOK. The fact that until the last moment there was no organized plan, not even for the transfer of PAOK fans to the stadium, but also for their departure from it, is evidence that the assessment of the situation was completely wrong.
Everyone is now awaiting UEFA’s final decision on the presence or absence of Marseille fans in Thessaloniki on Thursday, but also the possibility of imposing penalties. The problem for PAOK is to ensure that there isn’t the slightest reason that could sway the entire football team and the entire organization from their goal, which can be nothing other than flexing biceps for the first time in history qualify semi-finals of a European tournament.
