What Panathinaikos needs to change to increase its chances of winning the title

Having now completed the third cycle of this season, the sign can only be positive for Panathinaikos considering he has so far scored two different (and very big) goals in the league and Europe before scoring a third.. .Watermelon under the armpit in the first week of December with the first game of the “16” of the Cup against Olympiakos.

In Europe, which was also the first goal of the “Cloverleaf” in the right time, he made a wonderful series of qualifying matches, eliminated Dnipro, flew out of Marseille, which had nine times the budget – in a rematch that will be remembered for years will and is One of the evenings in which he “gives birth to new fans” – and he was excluded in detail by Braga, who punished his every mistake.

However, he returned after 7 years in European competition groups and in the first 4 games of the Europa League, the only “spot” he had was this second game against Rennes in France, where he did not use his numbers and did not manage properly 60 minutes lead, fell in the “traps” of the French and lost 3-1.

Realistic chances now only exist for 3rd place, which leads to the play-offs for the “16” of the Europa Conference League.

In Greece, the “Greens” have managed to bring the “imprint” of their competitive evolution to a much more aggressive set, pushing much higher and much more intensely, producing great energy on the field, and playing with 14 different ones players and masters most of his matches in many different ways.

Panathinaikos’ sometimes stressful (one-goal in the final) and sometimes “professional” victories last year have given way to goals and spectacle, with Panathinaikos currently boasting the best attack in the Super League with 29 goals – not counting the 3-0 win in the final Derby with Olympiacos, ratified in favor of the “Greens” – and the best defense (6 goals conceded) in 11 games and at +4 from Olympiacos and AEK and at +5 from PAOK.

Above all, he has played the best and most “full” ball in the league with 5+1 away wins (so far) and the only “miss” was the bad first half against AEK, which ultimately defeated him 2-1. There is of course also the 2-2 with PAOK at “Apostolos Nikolaidis”, in a very strange game in which the “magic image” (as it is supposed to be conveyed to the outside world) was not that Panathinaikos scored the equalizer in the final phase of the game with Alexander Geremegev, but that the score remained 2:2, on an evening in which the “Greens” dominated their opponents with 24:7 finals and a dozen really big chances.

Defensive “transition”, the only “wound”

A common denominator in all matches (especially the “big ones”) in which Panathinaikos has failed to achieve a victory, and perhaps the only thing that needs to be “corrected” on the field to increase its chances of winning the title this year, is one: The “wound” of the “cloverleaf” defensive transition.

If we gradually list the games in which the “Greens” were unable to achieve anything… higher up the field, in most cases they paid for their (overall) poor reactions during defensive transitions. In the second leg against Braga at OAKA, where Panathinaikos was looking for a goal to send the game into extra time, the Portuguese only got into the opponent correctly once with three passes and Bruma “ended” the series in the 84th minute.

For AEK’s second goal at Leoforo, the “yellow-blacks” played very directly with three passes into the penalty area and Pineda made it 2-1, at a time when Panathinaikos had tied the game.

In the game against PAOK, the North’s doubleheader “hit” Panathinaikos’ poor defensive transitions and imbalance twice. In particular, the 1:2 phase, in which Tyson ran 50 meters unhindered with the ball before passing it to Živkovic and scoring the perfect goal, is the epitome of poor defensive passing from the “green” side.

In France, the Rennes players skillfully played with the heads of the Panathinaikos players, pulling them too high and unbalancing them, even though the “Greens” had the numerical advantage, and hit them twice in an identical way, which gave them the advantage a very tough (when the conditions for the game were set) defeat…

Even in a game like this against PAOK at Leoforos, Panathinaikos’ defensive balance became poor in the 92nd minute when Samata (the “Greens” took a 2-2 lead) acted selfishly and failed to “break” the ball. . With the ball to his right, he went home alone and missed the chance to end the game.

Even in the game against Kifissia, Yannis Anastasiou’s side’s only chance in the 34th minute came from poor reactions in the defensive transition, with Tetei overtaking two players and Lodgin making the intervention of the month in Pritsa’s finish.

“Problem” that Ivan also pointed out

Of course, the above was not diagnosed or identified by Ivan Jovanovich. He was the first to address the specific issue immediately after the defeat against Rennes in France, stressing at the press conference that “… we made mistakes, largely due to haste and not concentrating on them To stop attacks.” That was the reason why we didn’t manage to do anything more, we had possession but it was completely meaningless.

For the teams that have the ball at their feet, it happens if we don’t block the transition. I don’t know if that’s the case with everyone, but it was the same with today’s. There were phases and duels in which we should have been stronger. They countered us with just a few players and scored two goals.

There are things we need to fix. It’s a question of transition, positioning, how strong we are and how organized we are when we lose the ball so we don’t leave too much space.”

Inability to “read” the data.

The move to a different and much more attacking style of football, which involves more players on the front lines of pressure, leads to the suggestion that this will create more spaces and gaps in the back zones. It’s a price you have to pay sometimes.

It’s not about Panathinaikos changing its playing model again, especially now that it has even better players playing really good football that the world loves to watch and has put it in a leadership position in the league.

But he will definitely be asked to find greater balance in his game and in the coherence of his lines when the ball is lost high and the opponent is sure to find a way to beat him on the counterattack.

The problem in this case is not only the poor defensive transitions after ball losses, but above all the partial inability of the Panathinaikos players to “read” the data, the course and the development of a phase.

Živkovic’s goal on Avenue might have been avoided if Arao had been a little more decisive in the phase where he “lost” Tyson and cynically fouled him in midfield to end the phase, even at the risk of a yellow card card. The same should have happened in the 2-1 phase at Rennes, where not a single player committed a “professional” foul in midfield or on AEK’s second goal.

A condition that repeats itself and is the only thing that still “hurts” him in a season in which he is much “fuller” and determined to cut the thread. And that’s a problem he’ll have to find solutions to in the near future, since the playoffs are (also) on the horizon. Because there the level of difficulty will be significantly higher in “big” matches.

How can he “cure” it?

How is this problem “cured”? Firstly, with additional work in Koropi, greater friction between players in the conditions of defensive transition, since everyone knows what to do and how to do it when the ball is lost, and of course with better decisions of the moment the second with a stronger dose of cynicism.

And possibly with an (even) faster and more aggressive stopper in January to give Panathinaikos a wider range of options. The only thing that is certain is that Jovanovic knows what he has to do better than any of us and that he is already doing it together with his partners.

And if the “Greens” manage to find more balance in this part, especially in their “big” games, then their chances of being the first to reach the finish line will increase even further. Because in attack their quality in midfield is undisputed, whether it can make the difference or not.