Night of glory for AEK, Panathinaikos and PAOK in Europe
Unlike the other Greek sides, Olympiakos went down at home to Freiburg
The start of the group stages in European competitions had some glorious results for Greek teams on Thursday, with AEK downing Brighton away and Panathinaikos defeating Villarreal in Athens, while PAOK beat Helsinki for the Conference League. On the contrary, Olympiakos went down at home to Freiburg.
AEK scored one of the biggest road wins in its European history, as this 3-2 result against Brighton will reverberate for days across Europe.
The Greek champion led twice through Djibril Sidibe on the 11th and Mijat Gacinovic on the 40th minute, but Joao Pedro converted two penalty kicks after 30 and 67 minutes to bring Brighton level. However Argentine supersub Ezequiel Ponce got to score the winner six minutes from time and silence the 30,000 Brighton fans.
Formidable Panathinaikos outclassed Villarreal at the Olympic Stadium of Athens and won 2-0 in front of some 60,000 fans, in a night to remember for the club that was the 1971 Champions Cup finalist.
Fotis Ioannidis opened the score with a delightful chip on the 39th and Andraz Sporar added the second 12 minutes from the end.
Freiburg posed a great challenge to Olympiakos at the packed Georgios Karaiskakis in Piraeus and won 3-2 for the Europa League.
Roland Sallai gave the visitors a ninth-minute lead, Ayoub El Kaabi equalized on the 40th, but Vincenzo Grifo restored Freiburg’s lead from the spot in first-half time added-on. El-Kaabi equalized again for Olympiakos on the 74th, only for Maximilian Philipp to score the German club’s third goal four minutes from the end.
PAOK came from behind to win 3-2 at Helsinki for the Conference League.
The Finnish team went ahead through Boureima Bande in the first half, but PAOK scored three second-half goals via Kostas Koulierakis, Kiril Despodov and Brandon Thomas, before Helsinki pulled one back from the spot in injury time with Bojan Radulovic.
