ARIS have overcome the hurdle of Egaleo and Yesterday night in the replay of the AEK - PAOK 0-1 game a fortnight ago PAOK ann AEK drew 1-1 in Thessaloniki! AEK scored early (8') to equalise on aggregate but PAOK clinched the win and Final Plave with an Okkas (Cypriot International) in the 87th minute! Yiannakis Okkas heads the ball into the AEK net... Two AEK Defenders are to his left and another PAOK midfielder on the right in case Okkas mised it! Bravo PAOK SO we have a Thessaloniki Derby for a final that will take place in PAOK's "Toumba" Stadium on the 17 th of May (I think) CUP FINAL : ARIS vs. PAOK
The Cup is a different issue man! And yes, Olympiakos have the chance of winning their 7th championship in a row next week but they have to win away vs, Ksanthi!
Then for us less knowledgeable folk(about Greek teams), could you explain what the difference between the Championship title and Greek Cup is? Are these for two different divisions?
RevdUp, In Greece we have the Division A where the top Greek teams fight for the championship. Division B Division C Division D And Local Championships The last teams (usually 3) of each division drop to the lower one and the top 3 teams of each division advance to the one above... The winner of the championship and the runner up go directly into the Champions League Groups. The third team wins a place for the last qualifying stage of the Champions League. If they win it they, as well go into the Groups. if not they continue in the Uefa cup. The next 2 teams in the league go in to the UEFA cup. The Greek Cup It is a different issue. ALL the teams from the top 3 divisions (i.e. A, B and C) go into grous of 6 or 7. After the completion of games between the teams in each group the 3 or 2 leading teams advance. Then the go into a draw and create couples of teams who try to eliminate eachother in a two legged tie (one at one teams homeground and one at the other teams homeground) We go from 32 teams to 16 ... to 8 ... to 4 and to the final . The final is ONE game usually in a neutral stadium (not this year though... PAOK played at their home ground but tickets were split evenly btween the fans of the two teams... ) The winner of the Greek Cup used to go into the Cup Winners Cup UEFA competition but now that this competition is cancelled the cup winners of all the European countries get a place in the UEFA Cup... The main difference is that lower division teams do have a chance of advancing to the latter stage of the competition although noone managed to win the cup up to now. But teams who do not usualy win the championship have won the cup n the past due to big teams priority for the champonship and European obligations! The most well known and older European National Cup competition is the FA cup in the UK. The 122nd final won by Arsenal also took place this past Sunday...
Thanks for the detailed info; it cleared up my confusion. So the Greek Cup is similar to the Open Cup we have here in the US(although no way near the number of teams involved as in the Greek version). And obviously, I take it the Division A Championship carries the most prestige of the two.
These people are not human! I dont even know how a person, a state, a legal system can react to this! I am disgusted... Unbelievable!
Ooohhh, man... the sports media here in the US are gonna have a ball with this news. $10 says this will make it to SportsCenter. Just another reason for them to hate soccer.
Haven't seen it on sportscenter. But what the hell are Aris fans thinking?? I thought the PAOK fans were bad enough....Greek football supporters groups are out of hand. I mean what other supporters groups do that kind of stuff. There were 40,000 Celtic supporters in Seville and I didn't hear or see anything about them causing trouble. Greek supporters should model themselves after them.
The sad part of it is that tension is bound to become higher! Aris plays home to (in form) Iraklis! Iraklis is a point back and if Iraklis wins Aris is left out of the UEFA cup next year! Thank god there are no blue (the colours of Iraklis) dogs!
It is an old and ongoing issue. And not only Greece of course. But in some European Countries the stadiums are a bit more organised and the law a bit more strict on them so it only errupts when the situation gets totally out of control. Here, the grounds are older. NO camera's etc. And the law is a bit tolerant of the troublemakers, in the sense that the law exist but it is not being implemented 100%. On top of that, teams mediate to get fans out of jail when they get arrested for trouble! So in a way they promote violence. All this is rapidly changing. Teams built new stadiums and the law, is being implemented in a more serious way. The Olympics help a lot. However, I do not want to see a situation where fans behave at home and let all hell lose when they travel away! (The likes of German and English and so forth.... ) The issue must be dealt in a pan-European and then a Worldwide basis. The system must be reliable and those who run it in contact. Football violence is never a domestic issue. Once dealt domestically it must be dealt everywhere. We are still at the point where we try to set things straight at home