30/1/2007 Back to work
The victory against AEL brought joy to the Olympiakos camp mostly due to the way it was achieved. The team performance has been improving steadily since the new year began but due to unforeseen reasons (lost penalty-kick against AEK and playing with 10 players against Salamina and APOEL due to bad referee decisions) the results were not in Olympiakos favour. Against AEL the excellent performance was rewarded at last with all three points. Even so, last Saturday's game belongs to the history books and another game approaches. Coming weekend Olympiakos is facing Ayia Napa in a crucial relegation-zone encounter. The Olympiakos players have already started working hard for this game and they know they need to win it. The head of the football team Akis Malekos called it the "Game of the year" for Olympiakos. Fortunately, Huan Ramon Rotsa will have all his players available as Godwin and Georgiou are back from suspension. He is expected to use most of his new signings who are widely acknowledged as the reason for the team's recovery. Panigutti, Adinolfi, Djenic, Machado and Spasic all played an important role in the victory against AEL. Georgi Hristov was the only new signing not used in the match. Hristov's abilities are well known but unfortunately his lack of recent official games has had an impact on his performance. Against AEL, Rotsa decided to start Panigutti who was in much better form given that he was playing in the Argentinian league up until December. However, Hristov will need to regain his form quickly as there are still a lot of games until the end of the season and it is certain that his services will be needed at some point.
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