PAOK Besiktas - Match Preview

                                                PAOK Besiktas Match Preview

By Alain Anastasakis

In these troubled times, affected by COVID and geopolitical situations, its always nice to focus on football for a change.

PAOK will face Besiktas for the Champions League preliminary round at Toumba on Tuesday. A big challenge that will require a strong performance from Thessaloniki's club.

PAOK president Savvidis recent statement, saying that the club will play "for the who of Greece", will put more pressure on the club.
 
After finishing second during the playoffs following a crazy season, PAOK goes again to try to qualify for the Champions League group stage. Due to Coronavirus, the club chose to have a smooth pre-season, with only 2 friendly games against local clubs. Some good things were seen but insufficient to really judge the team's level, or calm down all of last season's doubts, when the team, capable of the best and the worst, seemed to count too much on individual brillance without real proper tactics.

However, Dikefalo managed to be smart in the transfer market with the arrivals of Ninua, the Dynamo Tbilissi captain and Georgian wonderkid, and the high skilled and experienced Stefan Schwab, captain of Rapid Vienna. Two gifted players for our midfield, where last season the Black and Whites totally lacked of  creativity as soon as Misic wasn't in the squad.

We will also note the great work of Olaf Rebbe, who managed to sign players very quickly, and release players who were not part of Abel Ferreira's plans and/or were a burden for financial situations such as Wernbloom, Mauricio or Stoch.

The great unknown will be the players physical condition.

THE TACTICS :

Following the playoffs, we can guess that the Portuguese manager will stick with his 3-4-2-1 which we saw during the playoffs. The new generation is also here, and a lot our youth from the academy have been registered on the UEFA squad list and could be the X factor for us. Pablo Garcia trained the "Golden Generation", with fearless kids. As Ferreira said himself, "kids saved the season". They surely can do it again during the Champions League qualifying rounds.

We also assume that he will count on the experienced players like Varela for our defence, Biseswar and El-Kaddouri in the midfield and using Giannoulis and Limnios’ work rate on the wings.

These upcoming ties could be big for Giorgos Koutsias, 16, who could be the youngest Greek to play in European Cup in the following games.

The probable lineup : 

Paschalakis, Mihaj, Varela, Michailidis, Limnios, Giannoulis, Schwab, El Kaddouri, Tzolis, Biseswar, Akpom

Following Trabzonspor's FFP ban, Besiktas replaced them for the UCL qualifying after finishing 3rd in the Superlig last season. Besiktas lost their goalscorer Yilmaz who signed for Lille couple of weeks ago.

We are unsure about Ljajic's condition yet, but if he's able to play, he will be one of the biggest threats with his vision and his passing ability. PAOK will also have to be careful about George-Kévin Nkoudou on the left wing and the striker Cyle Larin who has come back from a good season in Belgium.

Following the global football situation and the PAOK's difficulties, we expect a very tight game, big intensity even if its being played in the summer time.

We surely don't expect a copy of last year Ajax's game. But with the serious work and a tactical improvement we’ve seen during the pre-season, PAOK can do something special in the UCL qualifiers this season.

Hellas Football

Follow @alainb_

 


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