Marked for Philippe Mathieu
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market29 Jun 2048
The offer from Basaksehir for Grigorios Vrousai was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Market29 Jun 2048
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Olympiacos have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Market29 Jun 2048
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market29 Jun 2048
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Olympiacos is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad29 Jun 2048
Words at Olympiacos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andreas Retsos is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad29 Jun 2048
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Andreas Retsos, and the manager let it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market10 Feb 2048
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad10 Feb 2048
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match8 Feb 2048
Whatever happens, Olympiacos do not lose
12 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Player ratings10 Feb 2048
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.95 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad10 Feb 2048
Grigorios Vrousai was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad10 Feb 2048
Thorgan Lukaku gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Thorgan Lukaku has just signed for Olympiacos, and for once the answer mattered.
Market10 Feb 2048
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Olympiacos will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
Market10 Feb 2048
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Olympiacos is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Market10 Feb 2048
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Asteras moved on, Philippe Mathieu reports back to Olympiacos, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match4 Jan 2048
7 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Player ratings6 Jan 2048
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.55, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings6 Jan 2048
Two goals and a mark of 8.30 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Match6 Jan 2048
Olympiacos refuse to drop out of the race
Position 3, 34 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Market6 Jan 2048
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market6 Jan 2048
Levadiakos are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Olympiacos will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Squad6 Jan 2048
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Match4 Jan 2048
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Olympiacos and Panserraikos in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match21 Dec 2047
5‑0, and Fotios Limnios took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Olympiacos tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Player ratings23 Dec 2047
Two goals and a mark of 9.50 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad23 Dec 2047
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Match21 Dec 2047
5 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Market23 Dec 2047
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Olympiacos heard it as anything else.
Squad23 Dec 2047
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Olympiacos may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad23 Dec 2047
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Olympiacos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings23 Dec 2047
24 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Market23 Dec 2047
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Olympiacos is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad25 Nov 2047
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Olympiacos may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market25 Nov 2047
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market25 Nov 2047
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Efthymios Retsos will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Olympiacos the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Match23 Nov 2047
0‑2 to Panetolikos, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad25 Nov 2047
Words at Olympiacos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stylianos Manolas is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad25 Nov 2047
57 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Boardroom25 Nov 2047
Nobody left the Olympiacos dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
Squad25 Nov 2047
Nobody at Olympiacos will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Player ratings25 Nov 2047
Successful dribbles: 13. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match29 Sep 2046
The run at home goes on for Olympiacos
12 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Market1 Oct 2046
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Olympiacos can pretend not to have heard.
Squad1 Oct 2046
Lorenzo Scipioni was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Market1 Oct 2046
Calvin Brobbey has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Olympiacos they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Match29 Sep 2046
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Anastasios Lampropoulos. 2‑1 against Asteras, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings1 Oct 2046
Fotios Georgiadis was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.11. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad1 Oct 2046
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Michalis Giakoumakis trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Boardroom1 Oct 2046
The music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
Squad1 Oct 2046
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.