A great night at the Toumba
PAOK are finally finding their way and proving it. With an excellent performance, the hosts beat Volos 3-0 at the Toumba, chalking up a third win in a row and overtaking the Magnesia club in the standings in the process. They have also caught up with Olympiakos in third place with 25 points, and the team now have one-and-a-half months of hard work ahead of them to improve even further after the World Cup.
Razvan Lucescu brought Koulierakis back into the starting line-up alongside Ingason, and lined up with a midfield trio of Filipe Soares, Douglas and El Kaddouri for the first time this season, with his players vindicating him from the start for his selections as they immediately penned Volos in their own half and started threatening the visitors’ goal.
El Kaddouri and A. Zivkovic threatened in the first minutes, while in the 7th minute, Filipe Soares stole the ball high up the pitch and produced a nice individual effort to score, but the referee, after using VAR, chalked off the ‘goal’ for an attacking foul.
The visitors threatened in the 13th minute with Kotarski saving Mattilla’s shot, while in the 23rd minute Oliveira failed to beat Kotnik from inside the penalty area.
PAOK «unblocked» themselves in the 28th minute. Konstantelias picked out Douglas with an incredible ball in front of Kotnik, and all the Volos goalkeeper could do was bring him down to conced a penalty. Oliveira stepped up to make it 1-0 from the spot-kick.
Two minutes later it was Andrija Zivkovic’s turn. Just hours before joining up with Serbia’s squad for the World Cup in Qatar, Zile bade farwell to the Toumba crowd with an incredible goal, shooting from outside the area to make it 2-0 in the 30th minute.
Volos squandered a great chance at the end of the first half with Barrientos missing a penalty, sending the ball wide.
PAOK entered the second half with a head of steam and had two great opportunities through Douglas and A.Zivkovic in the 49th and 51st minutes respectively. Initially, Kotnik parried the Brazilian’s shot, while the Serb saw his shot hit the post.
Douglas finally scored in the 62nd minute though to make it 3-0. Konstantelias was brought down in the penalty area by Matthias and the Brazileiro was on target from 12 yards to round off the scoring and put a nice gloss on an impressive display.
The game from there on in became merely a formality with PAOK getting an important three points and going into the break with calmness and confidence.
Team lineups:
PAOK (Lucescu): Kotarski, Sastre, Ingason, Koulierakis, Rafa Soares, Augusto (83′ Dantas), Filipe Soares (73′ Schwab), El Kaddouri (73′ Biseswar), Konstantelias (83′ Quagliata), A. Zivkovic, Oliveira (73′ Brandon).
Volos (Arms): Kotnik, Alho, Pirinen, Escoval, Luna (87′ Lymberakis), Barrientos (66′ Batocchio), Matija, Metaxas, Fernandes (66′ Knockert), Ozegovic (66′ Kucias), Deletic (78′ Fernandez).
