RRI Sports Club – Football
Florin Orban, 27.11.2024, 13:45
The Romanian football champion, FCSB, is facing a new difficult test. On Thursday, in Bucharest, they will be up against the Greek team Olympiakos Piraeus, in a new stage of the Europa League. After four games, FCSB occupies 8th place in the standings, with 9 points. The Greeks have two points less and occupy 11th place. We remind you that, at the end of this stage of the League, the top eight teams qualify directly for the round of 16, and the teams ranked between 9 and 24 will hold play-off matches. The teams that finish on the 25th to 36th positions, as well as those that lose the play-off, will be eliminated from the competition.
FCSB has won three of the four games played so far in the Europa League. They first beat the Latvian team RFS, 4-1, at home. They then defeated the Greek champion, PAOK Thessaloniki, 1-nil, away. They then suffered a nil-4 defeat in Scotland against the Glasgow Rangers. Finally, three weeks ago, the Romanian champion defeated the Danish team Mitdjylland, 3-nil, on the National Arena in Bucharest. In the Romanian SuperLeague, however, FCSB do not stand well at all. They occupy 5th place, having lost 4 of the 17 games played so far.
Olympiakos, one of the most loved Greek teams, is the leader of the country’s first division after 12 rounds. They have not lost a game in the championship for a month, when they lost nil-1 to Asteras Tripolis. Since then, they have beaten, among others, PAOK Thessaloniki and AEK Athens. In the Europa League, they have two wins, one draw and one defeat. They lost the first game, nil-2, away, to Lyon, then recorded two wins: 3-nil, at home, with Sporting Braga, then 1-nil, in Sweden, with Malmö. The last game, ended in a draw, 1-1, in Piraeus, with Glasgow Rangers.
The Austrian Sebastian Gishamer will be main referee of the match between FCSB and Olympiakos. He previously refereed a game of the Bucharest team, on September 16, 2022, in the Europa Conference League groups, with the Belgian team Anderlecht, which ended in a draw.
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