Olympiacos’ motives against AEK and Martins’ two shots

Olympiacos counts five wins in the same number of games against AEK in Georgios Karaiskakis with Pedro Martins on the bench and wants to extend this streak tonight (19:30 Novasports Prime and Live by Sportish).

The Portuguese coach has beaten the yellow and blacks in these 3.5 years he’s been with the Piraeus team, whether they’ve had Manolo Jimenez and Massimo Carrera in technical leadership, or Nikos Kostenoglou and Argyris Giannikis. During this period, Olympiacos has 8 wins and 3 draws for an independent home game in the league and also celebrated victory in the Greek Cup final in Volos.

However, what Martins and the Olympiacos players primarily want to win today, and they have several reasons:

First of all, the red-whites want to keep the safety margin (+9) on PAOK in the overall standings, who hosted Atromitos Athens in Toumba two hours earlier. It is something else for Olympiakos to continue with this difference or to increase it from the north’s bicep to the end of the normal duration of the championship and drop another to seven or six points. The championship still has a long way to go, there are still 15 games left (10 of them for the play-offs) to complete the event, which is quite a few.

Second, the Piraeus team wants the three points for prestige reasons. It’s a derby and Martins and the players know very well what these games mean for the club. Finally, the results in derbies often add or deduct points for some players when the tally is at the end.

Third, there is the personal motivation of the coach and players to add another win to their fortunes and some to raise their cartridge through such games.

And fourth, the midweek Portuguese coach and players aim to arrive with the best possible psychology for the game against Atalanta in Bergamo in the Europa League play-offs.

Martin’s aspirations

Martins, in private conversations he’s had with players over the past three days, intimated that the game with AEK will be quite difficult and asked them to forget the point difference that separates them from yellow and black, as well not being influenced by the opponent’s situation. The derbies are different, every game is a different story and the Portuguese coach knows very well that the Piraeus team’s players have to come out with the right mentality.

The coach of the Red and Whites therefore wants a quick goal, the players should come into play strongly, push up, steal balls, have the balance in defense and attack and be perfectly focused from the first to the last minute of the game. He also called for passion, stubbornness, determination to be extra careful defensively in the static phases and to seize the chances that will present themselves in attack.

The possible eleven

As for the line-up, Martins in tactics and relaxation that the Piraeus team will do in Renti on Sunday morning (13/2) can open his cards and have some surprises in store.

A possible composition (in a 4-3-3 system) is with Vatslik, Lala, Manola, Papastathopoulos, Reabciuk, Embila, Bouhalaki, M. Kamara, Masoura, A. Kamara and El Arabi or Tikinio. If the Portuguese chooses a 4-2-3-1 formation, then the eleven will be formed as follows: Vatslik, Lala, Manolas, Papastathopoulos, Reabciouk, Embila, Bouhalakis, Masouras, A. Kamara, Valbouena and El Arabi or Tikinio.

Martins recalls a number of players who stood out in last Wednesday’s 3-1 qualifier win against Panetolikos in the second leg of the Cup in Neos Faliros. Like Fadiga, Kitsos and Carvalho. Also available to the Olympiakos coach are Oniekouros, Lopes, Vrousai, Ba, Papadopoulos, Kane, Christinson and Tzolakis.

It is recalled that Cisse, Kude, Androutsos and the injured Rodrεςguez were expelled from the mission.