Maccabi Tel Aviv will face last year's second placed Greek side PAOK Thessaloniki in the play-off stage of the Europa League. The first leg will be played at Bloomfield Stadium on the 22nd of August
Maccabi Tel Aviv are set to face Greek side PAOK Thessaloniki in the Europa League play-off stage following today's draw at UEFA's headquarters in Nyon Switzerland. After the 30 participants in the draw were divided into separate groups this morning, non-seeded Maccabi Tel Aviv's were left with five potential rivals that included Spanish side Real Betis, Russian giants Spartak Moscow, Ukranian outfit FC Chornomorets Odesa and German side VfB Stuttgart. Ultimately though it was the Greek side PAOK that are set to travel to Bloomfield Stadium for the first leg on August 22nd before the Greek runners-up host Maccabi on August 29th. The return leg will be played without spectators as punishment handed down by UEFA to PAOK for fan misconduct.
Maccabi Tel Aviv head coach Paulo Sousa said after the draw: "At this level every club would like to reserve the opportunity to reach the group stage and we will do everything possible to ensure that the club, the team and the fans will represent Israeli football at international level". Maccabi midfielder Maharan Radi added: "On paper it might seem like a more comfortable draw than Spartak Moscow and Chornomorets because the Russians and the Ukrainians have played 4 league matches so far, while the Greeks have yet to start their season. Playing the first match at Bloomfield Stadium is not necessarily an advantage as the pressure will be on us to get a result that will keep the PAOK under pressure to get a result at home. And all that of course on condition we play like we did at home after the first half hour against Basel a few days ago, when we saw that a lot of surprising things can happen. And I'd like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to our fans whose constant support throughout the game gave us a massive lift and we hope to repay them for that support in the next match".
Like Maccabi, PAOK were eliminated from the qualifying rounds of the Champions League, in their case by the Ukranian side FC Metalist Kharkiv who beat them 3-1 on aggregate. PAOK are no strangers to Maccabi, as the two sides faced each other in a Champions League qualifier in the 2004/05 season which resulted in Maccabi's historic appearance in the group stages of the competition. Two other Israeli clubs, Bnei Yehuda and Beitar Jerusalem, have faced PAOK in European competition, the former last year in the Europa League qualifiers, the latter in the 2000/01 in the now moribund UEFA Cup. Both were defeaeted.
PAOK from Thessaloniki in northern Greece have two championships and four Cup titles to their credit and last year they finished second in the Greek Super League. Their star player and team captain is striker Dimitris Salpingidis, who scored eleven league goals last season. Salpingidis is one of fifteen Greek players on the PAOK squad that includes two top lieutenants, veteran Greece midfielder Kostas Katsouranis and the 25 year-old striker Stefanos Athanasiadis, who scored 14 goals last season. With a club-leading combined total of 29 goals, they and Salpingidis led PAOK to a respectable second-place finish in the Greek Super League behind champions Olympiacos F.C. The contribution of the foreign players was somewhat less striking, but the club have subsequently acquired the Slovakian midfielder Miroslav Stoch from Turkish side Fenerbahce S.K. and the Liberian midfielder Sekou Oliseh and the Czech striker Tomas Necid, both on loan from Russian club CSKA Moscow. All three have joined other foreign players on the squad, like Irish midfielder Liam Lawrence and Spanish goalkeeper Jacobo Sanz Ovejero, both with top flight experience in England and Spain respectively.
*photograph courtesy of the official PAOK Thessaloniki website
