The aftermath of the friendly with AEK Athens
Apollo's anniversary friendly against AEK attracted great interest, with eight or so friends of the two teams attending the “Alfamega Stadium” to watch the said match. But apart from the festive atmosphere that existed in the stands, and what Nikos Kirzis said about the relationship between the “yellow-black” and “cyan-white”… it is particularly interesting to focus on the competition.
Matias Almeida's group is clearly superior, which mainly dominated the first half and could have scored more than one goal (decisive interventions by Leuwenberg). From the Limassol team's point of view, we believe that Pablo Macin had the opportunity to take valuable notes for the future.
Marquez was clearly missing, while once again the main exponent of the offensive efforts was Valbuena, but it cannot be overlooked that the players gave him many duels, trying to see their best opponent in the eyes. So even if the capacity difference was clear (in all lines)… we maintain that the Spaniard's group counted valuable playing minutes against an extremely quality opponent.
Especially at this time when the “blue and white” want to prepare as well as possible for the double matches with Paphos, the match with AEK can only leave a profit. After all, it is a fact that the games of the second group are in no way as competitive as those played by Paphos every week.
“I was happy with the performance of my players. We created chances but didn't score goals. Either in the one-on-one situations or in the duels we were very good and I'm happy with the effort”, said Mr. Macin at the end of the match and his approach seems completely logical in relation to what we analyzed above.
Source: www.kathimerini.com.cy
