And so to the Stadium of Stone on Wednesday evening, when we host Olympiacos for the second game of this term’s Champions League league phase.
Greek football remains somewhat of a closed book to many. There are a few well-known clubs, including our guests, their Athenian neighbours, AEK and Panathinaikos, and the Thessalonians, PAOK. Yet, few beyond dedicated followers of the Souroti Super League could extend that list much — if at all. Among UEFA’s 55 European leagues, Greece ranks 11th, which is a decent standard but not top drawer.
Olympiacos is undisputedly Greece’s top team at the moment, and would claim that it has the trophies to justify that it always has been. It is the defending league champion and domestic cup holder, and remains unbeaten at the top of the Super League this season with four wins and a draw, having scored 13 goals and conceded three.
They come into this game off the back of a 3-2 victory over APO Levadiakos, although the winner came six minutes into stoppage time. In their first matchweek of the CL league phase, they drew 0-0 at home to the Cypriot champions, Pafos, 54 places below them in the UEFA club coefficient rankings, despite playing for an hour with a one-man advantage (and for a while, two if you count the presence of David Luiz in the Pafos team).
Fishy
My favourite ‘fact’ about Olympiacos, which is based in Athens’ seaport, Piraeus, is that the team got one of their nicknames, the Anchovies, after some Panathinaikos fans hurled crates of anchovies they got from the quays at Olympiacos fans. I put ‘fact’ in quote marks because the story falls into the category of being too good a tale to investigate its veracity. A history of bitter, class-based and frequently violent rivalry between the two clubs and their fans — matches between them are known as the Derby of the Eternal Enemies — lends at least a patina of plausibility.
Olympiacos wears its maritime working-class roots proudly, although several prominent members of the Piraeus business community were behind the establishment of the Olympic Association of Piraeus Sportsmen in 1925. They created a multisports club embracing Olympic ideals, which the football team remains part of to this day. The club has won European titles in six sports. The badge worn by all its teams features an Olympian wreath of laurel leaves.
Its football team’s trophy room is stacked: 48 league titles (five with unbeaten seasons), 29 domestic cups (19 as part of a double) and four super cups, all Greek records. Five sets of five or more league titles in successive seasons is a world record. Olympiacos is also the only Greek football team to have won a senior UEFA trophy, the Conference League in 2023-24.
In 1979, a group of eminent shipowners took control of the club. Among them was Miltiadis Marinakis, father of Evangelos, who would buy the club in 2010 and whose sporting empire now includes Nottingham Forest and Edu.
The opposition
Olympiacos is managed by José Luis Mendilibar, a 64-year-old Basque who coached a 13-year-old Mikel Arteta. He is well-travelled in La Liga, but this is his first appointment outside Spain. He arrived in February 2024 from Sevilla, with whom he won the Europa League. He was La Liga’s manager of the year in 2016-17 when he was at Eibar. He is a wily old head not to be underestimated.
He likes to set up in a 4-2-3-1. There will not be many familiar names.
Konstantinos Tzolakis, the 22-year-old Greek national keeper, is Mendilibar’s first choice between the sticks.
Club captain, Johannesburg-born Panagiotis Retsos, another Greek international and who spent time at Sheffield United, will likely share centre-back duties with 23-year-old Italian Lorenzo Pirola, who captained Italy’s U-21 Team but has yet to advance to the senior team.
With the veteran Brazilian full-back Rodinei reportedly injured, Costinha, a 25-year-old Portuguese who came through Braga’s youth ranks and, like Pirola, earned numerous U-21 caps but has not progressed to the senior national team, will likely start at right-back, with one-cap Argentine international Francisco Ortega on the left.
For the double pivot, Mendilibar will perm two from 35-year-old Spaniard Dani Garcia, Argentine international Santiago Hezze, 12 years Garcia’s junior, and Christos Mouzakitis, an 18-year-old who already has five full caps for Greece and is likely headed for Milan or Turin before too long. The Argentine Lorenzo Scipioni, 20, another of Olympiacos’s promising youngsters, is out injured.
Portugal international Gelson Martins would be Mendilibar’s first choice for the right wing. However, he is working his way back from injury, so Gabriel Strefezza, who arrived from Como in the summer after bouncing around Serie A for most of a decade, could start. The opposite flank is likely to be occupied by Daniel Podence, a Portuguese winger who Olympiacos sold to Wolves, then borrowed back, and has again been borrowed back this season after Wolves sold him to Al-Shabab. Ex-Newcastle winger Remy Cabella is ineligible following his transfer from Lille.
Chiquinho, a Brazilian who has played most of his professional football in Portugal, most recently with Benfica, is now the playmaker, following Brighton’s purchase of Charalampos Kostoulas for €35 million, a tidy sum for an 18-year-old. Charalampos’s father, Athanasios, played for Olympiacos in the noughties.
Ayoub El Kaabi, a seasoned centre-forward with more than 50 caps for Morocco, will lead the line. He scored 27 goals for Olympiacos in 44 matches last season, including seven in eight Europa League games. Roman Yaremchuk, a centre forward with 63 Ukraine caps, is out with a calf injury.
From the bench, Mendilibar will be able to call on veteran Iran forward Mehdi Taremi, who was in the Porto side we played last year and the Inter team we faced the season before that. The manager also has Giulian Biancone, a French utility defender who was previously at Nottingham Forest, and winger Stavros Pnevmonidis, another promising teenager who has come up through Olympiacos’s youth teams.
Olympiacos added experience over the summer to support its young players for this CL campaign, but that has resulted in it having the third-oldest squad in this season’s CL, behind Inter and Pafos, with an average age of 29 years and 263 days.
Head-to-head
We have played Olympiacos a dozen times: four CL ties (2009, 2011, 2012 and 2015) and two in the Europa League (2020 and 2021). The tally stands at six wins apiece. The home games split similarly: we won the first three and lost the three most recent. The away games are a mirror image: we lost the first three but won the most recent trio.
The last time the two sides met was in 2021 in the Europa League round of 16. We lost a match played behind closed doors because of COVID-19, 1-0, but progressed 3-2 on aggregate. Only one Arsenal player who started that match, Gabriel, is still at the club, although Martin Ødegaard and Gabi Martinelli came off the bench.
The Arsenal
Piero Hincapié and Noni Madueke join long-term absentees Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz on the off-games list. Arteta says everyone else is available. He also says he expects a tough game, as he always does, but I suspect he will utilise our squad depth to get some minutes into lesser-used legs. Thus:
Raya
White, Saliba, Gabriel, Calafiori
Ødegaard, Zubimendi, Merino
Saka, Gyökeres, Martinelli
Many of Dowman, Nwaneri, Lewis-Skelly, Rice, Mosquera, Timber, Eze, Trossard and Norgaard should get a decent run-out off the bench.
The momentum from Sunday’s win up North should carry through to Wednesday evening for players and fans alike. We should be faster, higher and stronger than our opponents, so I’ll hazard a routine 3-0 to take them down from their mount.
Enjoy the game, ‘holics, far and wide.
—-
Wow, the Monks have been putting in long overtime hours on the opposition we face tomorrow night. I’m going to the game so will carry all of their words of wisdom with me.
That’s a good looking and quite likely team you’ve picked, Ned. I do wonder when Kepa will get to start a game and begin his assault on displacing Raya from the starters berth. Possibly vs Brighton in the Carabao?
I like the sound of a 3-0 home win but there’s a feeling in my bones that a narrower scoreline may adorn the scoreboard when 90 minutes have rolled by. I’ll be very happy with a home win.
Ned,
That preview is exceptionally informative and sets the game up nicely . I am doing the match report from the ground but for logistical reasons it won’t be possible to read it until Thursday morning . I anticipate a game which we can ultimately win with a degree of comfort but it may not be plain sailing at first . We have a strong squad but Gyokeres is the only player of his type in our squad and I anticipate he will cause mayhem if unleashed . I think Odegaard may be eased back with Nwaneri replacing him if the match situation allows it I think Ned’s 3-0 is a good shout and I think Viktor may contribute a couple of them.
Incidentally, the referee will be the gentleman who refereed our tie in Madrid so impartially last year . Let’s hope he has as good a game again .
Thanks Ned, a fine preview as always and let’s hope the
gifts include three points. Can’t see any reason why not
although as you point out we have managed to lose our
last three at home to them. 3-0 works for me but hard to
guess who will rest these days. Regardless of who starts
I hope for a couple of goals in the first half so we can
manage the game after that
Great preview, Ned. I had forgotten that we have lost to them more than once at home. It’s time to turn that run around. Your team and score will do me fine.
Sadly I may struggle to see the game. The local Irish pub will understandably be showing the Juve match and the VPN on my phone may not get around restrictions on viewing abroad.
Agenda:
Start strong
Attack, attack and attack
Win game
Rest key legs.
Ned, before I even read the preview, big thank you for both taking on another preview so soon after the last one and another rapid update of the Predictathon.
Right, off to read now what looks to be another great piece from the opening lines of the previous drinks.
Thanks for the Predictathon update Ned, I must admit to some trepidation after the talk of precipitous drops but I’m still challenging for a CL place to my surprise 😄
Thanks Ned
Kick off here a bit early for a glass of retsina but hopefully still a good start to the day.
3-0 would be fine.
UTA.
I don’t think we appreciate just how good your previews are Ned. A combination of meticulous research and an empathic feel for football. Thank you.
Here’s an interesting article on the upcoming closure and complete rebuild of the San Siro. I have been to Milan many times but never to watch football.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6676465/2025/10/01/san-siro-inter-milan-stadium-demolish/
Exceptional, Ned – and thanks for all the hard work in providing us with a plethora of interesting facts. That means a lot 😉
Seriously, another seamlessly woven tapestry of on and off field events.
We will work like Trojans to win tonight Kos we will have to. When we do score I hope the noise from the fans will take the Demis Roofoff !
Come on you Rreddsss !
Thanks for the kind words, all. Greatly appreciated.
C100@9: Thanks for the link. Worth it for the two photos of the San Siro in the 1950s alone.
That’s an impressively detailed analysis of the Olympiacos squad. Thanks Ned!
Having witnessed firsthand some verbal exchanges between Olympiacos and Panathinaikos supporters — in a kind of open air bar mostly packed with Panathinaikos supporters watching their team getting kicked out of Europa by Ajax in a long drawn out penalty shoot out — I have absolutely no doubt about the anchovy story, I suspect anchovies may have been one of lesser troubling items being thrown at each other. 🙂
Our next home game in CL is against the painful Atletico Madrid team, then Bayern … I think it’s really important to prioritize three points more than rotation, and rely more on the rotation against West Ham at home. I like the team you suggested, but getting Eze to start and create and taking chances early might be my preference. Eze in place of Martinelli or even Merino? Just an idea…
We should start fast, and try to make our early dominance count. A 3-0 scoreline is quite possible, a scoreline like a 5-1 is possible if we can score a couple of goals very early.
Come on Arsenal!
Team news in and it was a valiant effort
from the monks in fact. MLS and Leo
start but it looks a good XI to me
Raya,
White, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly
Zubimendi, Odegaard, Merino,
Trossard, Gyokeres, Martinelli
Bench: Rice, Dowman, Arrizabalaga, T. Setford, Mosquera, Saka, Eze, Timber, Norgaard, Nwaneri, Calafiori
Another fantastic preview Ned, we are indeed fortunate here. A cracking effort on the team selection – and a cracking team selected by the gaffer, with a classy bench to come on as & 2h3n required. Hoping for a good performance & result to put our recent results against them a distant memory.
COYRRR
we should be three up. gabi with a hattrick, if he makes that header and if gyokeres passes to him with the open goal. maybe 3-1 would be deserved after that excellent save by raya.
I wonder if he has in mind to change a couple at half time and a few at 60 to share the load with the game on Saturday in mind.
No changes at half time, hopefully we
get a goal fairly early 2nd half although
I think MA probably already has some
changes planned
saka for the glacé.
Well the goal wasn’t quite as early as I had in mind in the 2nd half
but 6 points out of 6 is never to be sniffed at to me and on we go
in good heart. Next up, hammer the hammers.
That should have been at least 3-0. Just saying.
at least. maybe 3-1, 4-1, or 5-1. that save by raya was world-class.
What a start we had! For 30 minutes we looked like Brazil and should have been at least 3 up. Nonetheless we were reliant on Raya’s expertise to preserve the lead and certainly not as dominant in the second half and really second best. But once again the benefit of a strong bench was demonstrated. What a relief Saka’s goal provided! We need to learn how to take those chances.
Good piece on KT3 from the BBC.
I loved KT3 and he was was a great man to have
on your side, but as he looks back you have to
wonder about some of the decision making by
both him and the people around him.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/articles/c3e72dywg98o
Last night’s report is done and will be delivered later
Thanks for the piece on KT3 – a sad story of a body incapable of allowing him to fulfil his talent . But the early management of him seems very flawed .
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>