Easy win for Panathinaikos
Panathinaikos maintained their surprisingly perfect record in the Champions League Group C with a confident 2-0 win over Real Mallorca late on Wednesday. It was a fair win, said Panathinaikos coach Yiannis Kyrastas. The match was a lot easier than we expected. And if we win our next match it will be very difficult for anyone to stop us reaching the next phase. The scoreline was a repeat of their victory over Schalke 04 in the first match last week, and sent them to the top of Group C with a three-point lead over Arsenal and Mallorca. Arsenal are their next opponents in Athens next Wednesday. Kyrastas’s side, who posed a constant threat down the right wing, nearly forced an 18th minute penalty for handball from beleaguered Mallorca’s left back Miguel Soler. But the packed Leoforos stadium in Athens did not have to wait long for the home side’s breakthrough. In the 25th minute, Jan Michaelsen broke away down the right and crossed for the unmarked Goran Vlaovic, and the Croat calmly lobbed the ball over stranded Mallorca goalkeeper Leo Franco. Three minutes later, Giorgos Karagounis popped up on the right to send in a dangerous cross that Vlaovic flicked on to Michalis Konstantinou, who cleverly made space to slot home the second. We pulled them out of shape with the first goal, which is hard to do with a team of the quality of Mallorca, and then with the second goal we took complete control of the game and created so many chances I lost count, said Kyrastas. Mallorca could make little headway after the break against a home defense marshaled calmly by the Danish international Rene Henriksen. With the visitors chasing the game, Panathinaikos’s Konstantinou, signed by the club for a record sum, was presented with a succession of chances but failed to seize any of them with either head or feet. Late substitute Joonas Kolkka came closest to adding to the score, as he flicked an injury-time shot on to the post with Franco scrambling to retrieve the rebound. Mallorca coach Bernd Krauss was shocked by the poor quality of his side’s performance. They played better than us, he said. We played very badly and it was the correct result. We played without heart, showed nothing in attack and you can’t come here and win with football alone. Panathinaikos are very strong at home and this is a very bad result for us. Krauss refused to speculate on how Arsenal or Schalke would fair against Panathinaikos in Athens but cast the Greeks as group favorites. However, rising living standards and incomes mean that more and more people are taking air conditioning for granted in a city where, just a couple of decades ago, it was considered a luxury in private homes. In Greece, energy consumption in buildings now accounts for 38 percent of the country’s total energy consumption, increasing all the time due to high levels of dependence on air conditioning in summer months, according to architect Evgenia Lazari.
