Was it easy to keep his players focused:

«It was not an easy situation for us. There is lots of anger, we have been wronged. Our biggest motivation in producing this kind of football today was the character of my players. We tried to protect our job, to show who we are. We always do that. We demonstrate our work, win or lose, always on the pitch. I would like to see how another group of players would have reacted if they had lost two matches in a fortnight, one because of a paper roll and the other because the referee disallowed a legitimate goal. I would really like to see how another team would react to all this«.

On the matches against Atromitos this season:

«We played four tough encounters against them, but we were ready. Atromitos press high up the pitch, but we broke through their zonal defence and encountered solutions through our attacking midfielders«.

What he told his players in recent days:

«Our philosophy makes it easy for us to keep the proper mentality. We reject this whole circus, the mentality of the two Athens clubs, who chose either not to play or not continue their matches. The bans and everything that happened isn’t real football. This image projected abroad is not good for Greek football. It’s easy to say “I take my team away from the pitch and I won’t play or resume playing”, but it’s harder to come out on the field and show your real potential. We are true to our word. We have already played seven home matches behind closed doors, our president will be away from our matches for three years, our technical director has been banned for three months, but we continue on our course«.

On PAOK’s objective:

«We focus on the next match, on the next three points. As far as I am concerned, we have 58 points in our tally and a match less, the one against Olympiakos. All the rest, everything happening off pitch is a huge hypocrisy«.

On his team’s performance and Atromitos’s display:

«It was a good match between two competitive team. It was to be expected that Atromitos would create chances, one of them came from our error. They also carved two opportunities to score from set pieces, but we were lucky. The scoreline could have been larger, because we also wasted a few chances«.

On the ban inflicted on PAOK and their share of responsibility:

«Where are we to blame? I am speaking about our team and only about football. We wanted to play but our rivals didn’t come out of their dressing rooms. In the other match, we played, scored in the 90th minute a legitimate goal, but AEK won the match on paper. It’s not my place to decide on the bans. I am expressing my opinion on events. I am not a lawyer or a judge and I don’t want to engage in this conversation«.