Pedro Martins knew the colossal schedule that his team is facing in the month of February. The Erythrolefki will compete in 8 matches this month; this includes the Europa League Round of 32 clashes against Atalanta. Heading into their Superleague Matchday 21 clash against Panetolikos, Olympiakos wanted a comfortable victory to inch them a step closer to their 47th Greek Championship. They got just that, and possibly another key victory in the form of Garry Rodrigues. The Cape Verdean winger netted two goals and showed glimpses of brilliance.
It took less than four minutes for Olympiakos to jump to a 2-0 lead. Mathieu Valbuena opened up the scoring and the aforementioned Rodrigues doubled the lead moments later. Swedish winger Jonathan Morsay cut the lead by one in the 28th minute when he took advantage of an Oleg Reabciuk poor sequence of events. Rodrigues netted his second tally in the 73rd minute. Right-back Kenny Lala and Rodrigues linked well on the right side, creating chances from their pace, overlapping and synched play. Unfortunately for Lala, he was injured midway into the first half and was replaced by Thanasis Androutsos.
Looking Ahead
The “schedule from hell” has only started for the Piraeus-based club. They will travel to Nikaia this Sunday to play Ionikos. Historically, the Neapolis Public Stadium has always been a hostile environment but that obviously won’t be the case this weekend with the government-imposed attendance cap.
We know that creating champions and making a deep European run requires a healthy squad with lots of bench options. The winger position has been an issue for Olympiakos for two years; since Daniel Podence made the jump to England. This year alone, Henry Onyekuru and Rony Lopes haven’t shown anything worth writing home about. Let’s hope for Martins and for the fans that Garry Rodrigues is about to change that.