Olympiakos lying low but won’t surrender
NEWCASTLE – As things have turned out, Olympiakos, in this English city for a fourth round UEFA Cup return leg against Newcastle United tonight, is more focused on its domestic commitments. A 3-1 loss at home last week against the English side leaves the Greek league’s front-runner with little to hope for in its European campaign. Realistically, the Greek league now ranks as Olympiakos’s top priority, but a 1-1 home draw against third-placed AEK last weekend deprived the club of establishing a gap with its nearest rivals, Panathinaikos and AEK. Tied in top spot with Panathinaikos but boasting a better goal average, and threatened by AEK a point behind, Olympiakos travels to Crete this week for what should be a tough encounter against OFI. Olympiakos’s 3-1 home loss against Newcastle United in last Thursday’s UEFA Cup first leg amounted to an anti-climax. But coach Dusan Bajevic warned that Olympiakos had yet to surrender. «We won’t just be going through the motions for this game. Olympiakos has a reputation and a history and will fight this encounter out,« said Bajevic, while admitting that the 3-1 deficit was «difficult to overturn.» The Serb-Greek coach will be without Brazilian star Rivaldo, who is battling an ankle strain and is fighting to be fit for Sunday’s match in Crete. Also out are defenders Grigoris Georgatos and Thanassis Kostoulas, who face one-game suspensions after receiving walking orders in last week’s first leg. «Other players will fill these gaps. It’s going to be tough but we’ll try,» said Bajevic. Some 600 UK-based Olympiakos fans are expected at Newcastle United’s 52,000-capacity St James Park stadium, while a few hundred more Greek fans are scheduled to travel for the game from Greece. Reflecting the first leg’s walkover by the English club, Newcastle United officials said they were expecting about 40,000 fans in total. Even so, Newcastle United’s captain said his team was not taking the return leg lightly. “We’ve worked very hard to get into this position – it will be criminal for us to throw it away now,” Alan Shearer told reporters. «We’ve got to treat it as a normal game. I saw enough from Olympiakos with nine, 10, 11 men to know they’ll cause us problems.»
