Ok, that’ll do. It was quite probably the last European football we’ll see for a bit. Thanks for joining me, we do really appreciate it, especially with everything so up in the air just now. Look after yourselves, and see you again soon.
Simon Burnton’s match report:
Conor Coady: “It’s important we got the away goal, we’ll take it to next week and look forward to next week. Strange [circumstances] but we didn’t want it to distract us, obviously it’s a massive game for this football club, we’ll see what next week holds.”
Neto: “Against 10 guys it was a little more difficult because they closed the space. We could have shot more times but we are already focused on the next one.”
The news from Glasgow:
It really wasn’t much of a watch, that, but well done to both sides for making something of it. Not an ideal position for anybody and I know – from talking to players at various levels of European football today – that almost all involved would rather games were cancelled than played in those conditions.
Full-time: Olympiakos 1-1 Wolves
Ok, we’re through that. And Wolves have a good enough chance of being through this tie at some point in the coming weeks or months, thanks to Neto’s away goal. They weren’t great against 10 men but it’s a platform.
90+2 min: Neves goes on a nice little run and beats a man, before drilling wide from 25 yards.
90+1 min: Sa is booked for taking ages over a goal kick. He must be the only person who wants this to be going on much longer. We’ll see four added minutes though, and Neto is booked for a foul as they begin. Rangers are now 3-1 down.
88 min: Jimenez can’t work space for a shot after Boly does well, but does manage to dink over a chipped ball that Sa has to paw away.
87 min: Good old England, always knowing best, eh! Remarkable isn’t it.
86 min: Nope, because Neto does look for him but overhits it badly.
85 min: Dendoncker is being readied by Wolves, and will come on before they take a corner. Here he is in Moutinho’s place; can he attack the cross?
84 min: Gaspar replaces Valbuena, who remains very sprightly for a 35-year-old and did OK out there today.
82 min: Don’t worry, this isn’t quite your lot.
Following the latest update from Government issued this afternoon, all Premier League matches will go ahead as scheduled this weekend
— Premier League (@premierleague) March 12, 2020
Full statement: https://t.co/CPCEJdaK7c pic.twitter.com/GyZ3tAUwgT
81 min: Neto has a go from the edge of the area after cutting in, but Sa gathers. Can Wolves work a late winner here, as Arsenal did?
80 min: Hasn’t quite happened for Traore tonight but he does win a corner, before which Podence replaces Vinagre. He’d probably have liked a rather more raucous reception from his old home crowd! The corner is high and beyond Boly at the back stick.
78 min: A goal back for Rangers against Leverkusen. Something to cling onto come July or whenever.
76 min: Vinagre has gone on a few nice little runs tonight but he can’t work a good angle to find a teammate at the end of his latest one.
74 min: El Arabi, very good tonight as he was against Arsenal, is replaced by Fortounis. Think that means the hosts may be basically going centre-forward-less.
72 min: Now Traore clips a cross and Jimenez thrusts a decent enough header straight at Sa. He had to generate his own pace.
71 min: Rangers are now two down. Sa takes treatment after a collision with, I think, Boly but he’s up again now. We will see another home sub soon.
69 min: They’d been winding the pressure up and this was, if not exactly “coming”, but getting more likely. A stroke of luck, but they won’t care.
Goal! Olympiakos 1-1 Wolves (Neto 67)
It’s tapped to Neto, whose low drive is possibly going wide ... but it clips Bouchalakis and gives Sa absolutely no chance! There’s the away goal!
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67 min: A Wolves free-kick 30 yards out. And ...
64 min: Traore tricks into a good area but his attempted cross is deflected to Sa.
63 min: Now Wolves are pushing relatively hard. Can they create some more openings like that last one?
60 min: Wolves’ first big chance of the game now, as Neto slips Jimenez in on the right and you half-expect the net to bulge. But Sa blocks his full-blooded effort. Then Neves creams one not far off target. Of course 1-1 would be very good for Wolves if they can do it.
58 min: “Maybe they should pipe in a laugh track – a really raucous 70s sitcom laugh track, to reflect the laugh-or-cry times we’re living in,” posits Claire Adas.
56 min: It seemed fairly noisy when that went in, for a closed-doors game. Jota tries to respond and goes down in the area, but he won’t get that one as the defender won the ball. It’s a corner but, again, nothing is made of it.
Goal! Olympiakos 1-0 Wolves (El Arabi 54)
Oh, this would be even better for them! It comes from absolutely nowhere but it’s well worked, Guilherme taking the ball on beautifully inside the box and bursting to the line, teeing up perfectly for his teammate to clip into the roof of the net. Well, well.
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53 min: What a good result 0-0 would be for Olympiakos now. They’ve shown they are more than capable of notching an away goal, whenever that rematch actually happens. And they’ve not been in much danger of conceding yet, with 11 men or 10.
50 min: Wolves do seem to be taking a bit more initiative in this half, albeit with nothing yet to show for it in terms of chances or goals.
47 min: Traore wins an early free-kick but, after being crossed in, it squirms behind off Jimenez.
46 min: Wolves made a half-time change there, Neto on for Doherty. An attacking switch?
Peeeep! The second half has begun
We. Can. Do. This.
But can Wolves? Big chance for them, in all seriousness.
Matt writes:
“As I see it, if the rest of the season is cancelled I can say that, by gum, it happened just as Arsenal were mounting a comeback for the ages. I’ll be all misty eyed about the might-have-beens, not nauseated by the reality.”
Enjoy some goals here though, courtesy of Jamie Jackson in Linz:
Half-time: Olympiakos 0-0 Wolves
Wolves have a one-man advantage after Semedo was sent off for clipping – if he actually did do any clipping – Jota. And that’s all I have to tell you. What are we doing here again?
45 min: One last chance for Wolves before the break though, as Tsimikas lands Traore on his backside after being pretty thoroughly skinned near the corner flag. It’s a free-kick; it’s not, as things turn out, anything more.
44 min: Traore surges forward for Wolves but drags the ball wide. We haven’t really come at all close to a goal at either end here, red card or not. It’s just all a bit dispiriting, I have to tell you.
42 min: Rangers are a goal down to Bayer Leverkusen at Ibrox, a Kai Havertz penalty causing that.
41 min: If the ball is played time and time and time again among a back four in an old Greek port city and nobody is there to see it, does it make a sound?
39 min: A booking for Coady as Olympiakos look to mount an attack. He catches Valbuena and has no complaints. Little is made of the set-piece, they’re happy to keep possession.
38 min: I think I agree with Phil on Jota – need one more viewing of it – and I definitely see what he means on Nuno, whose teams are functionally quite superb but don’t *always* get you off your seat.
36 min: “Terrible call by the ref.” says Phil Russell. “That was a dive and a yellow card all day, and I speak as a Wolves fan. You could tell by the look on Moutinho’s face that Jota’s got away with that. Also a red card is 100% not the decision when the stadium is full.
“Still at least it’s livened the game up. Nuno does seem to be happy to throw in turgid 0-0s from time to time when we come up against a side that cancels us out (looking at you Ole).”
34 min: Yes, off comes Masouras and on comes the defender Cisse, who played and scored at the Emirates because Semedo was suspended there, too.
33 min: Semedo is the home side’s best defender so that was definitely a big blow for them. Think they will make a change soon to shore things up.
31 min: Neves’ free-kick clips the wall and goes behind. This is a great chance for Wolves to seize the initiative now though. They don’t do it from this corner, because Sa punches it away.
Red card! Semedo (Olympiakos)
Something has happened! Wolves break well and the in-form Jota, so fleet of foot, knocks it past Jota just outside the box and goes down. He possibly makes a lot of it but he’d have been clean through and that’s a sending-off for an absolutely seething home centre-back!
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27 min: Guilherme spoons one from 25 yards as Olympiacos try to force the issue a bit, but overall this is cagey.
25 min: “One closed doors game was enough for me,” writes Michael George, the splitter! “I’m watching Rangers Leverkusen. As a drunk Glaswegian, I never thought I would appreciate other drunk Glaswegians so much! If crowds are going to be banned going forward, maybe they could play canned fan noises like they do laughs in crappy sitcoms.”
And at Highbury in the 1992-93 season.
Oh, Camara had a harmless daisycutter saved just now ... before Masoursas is flagged offside, luckily for him, when clipping the bar after a decent home counter.
Oh oh oh, and that Rangers game is available with Daniel Harris:
22 min: “Regarding the rumours in Germany, wouldn’t this solution add more league matches to an already packed domestic schedule, wherever it is implemented? Especially if the Euros are postponed to 2021, what would the calendar look like?” asks Kishalay Banerjee.
Yes, there will be a lot of questions like this. One solution might be to allow European and domestic games on the same night. Another is that, just for one year, clubs have to rotate more. These are difficult times and it is all going to be about choosing the least bad set of options.
19 min: Vinagre has a scamper about and wins a corner for Wolves. That was nicely done. Moutinho swings it in ... oh no, he actually goes short and is mugged by Valbuena when he gets it back.
16 min: Matthew Turland is the first to ride to this MBM’s rescue –
“I’ve been playing a new game the past couple of days with the behind-closed-doors games: who has the best fans who stand outside the stadium. I was deeply impressed with Valencia’s commitment even though it was a real lost cause. How are Olympiakos shaping up?”
Well, PSG’s were quite something although, at the same time, probably pretty irresponsible. Not sure of the situation in Piraeus, but a few of distinctly red and white persuasion do seem to have made it inside. Quite possibly wider club employees spurring their lads on, I guess.
14 min: First almost-chance of the game, Tsimikas whipping a great cross beyond Boly, and Coady having to block a Masouras header. The corner is, at some length, dealt with.
13 min: Traore is robbed and for a moment an attack for the hosts is possibly on, but now they’re just knocking it around again.
11 min: I meant it earlier, please do write in tonight, I sense this is going to feel looonnnnnnng.
9 min: Doherty is booked for clipping the attacking left-back Tsimikas, the Greeks’ best player in those Arsenal ties, and it’s a very dangerous free-kick for the hosts. Valbuena whips it straight into Rui Patricio’s arms.
6 min: Wolves show for the first time with some good work from Jimenez, but then Traore runs it out of play. There is definitely a partisan element in those stands *somewhere*, I swear Traore was booed when he took possession there.
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4 min: It would be interesting, wouldn’t it, to measure players’ sprints, key passes attempted, risks taken, runs into the box, stuff like that, in behind-closed-doors games vs games with fans. You’d try that extra thing if there was a crowd willing you on, no?
2 min: Olympiakos play the ball around for the first 100 seconds, lose it and then get it back again.
Peeeep. Off we go, because football
The teams could not have looked less wanting-to-be-there when lining up for the Europa League anthem. I swear I can hear a little pocket of people chanting Olympiakos songs in there, for what it’s worth. Or is it being piped through? Or coming from outside? Hmmm.
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Wolves will play in green today, for those who like to imagine exactly what is going on. Still at a loss to work out why Wolves were made to be here at all.
I was at Karaiskakis Stadium for that Arsenal first leg three weeks ago and, yes, it’s going to be eerie in there with no fans. But there we go. The players will be out on the pitch soon.
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Manchester United are now 5-0 up. If there was an argument for truncating the rest of this season’s European ties into one-leg affairs, this was it.
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I just felt, across that Arsenal tie, that Olympiakos lacked a real weapon. They were neat enough, certainly no mugs, but a half-decent performance from Arsenal in that second leg would have done for them. Wolves should fancy this strongly.
I mean, there is going to be a lot of this swirling around in the coming weeks and in a 24-hour news culture it will pay to be discerning and sensible. But stuff like this does not seem unrealistic, even if not in England:
Rumours in Germany that the 2019/20 season could be ended after Matchday 26 without a national champion. Teams would qualify for Europe according to their standings. No teams would be relegated and the 20/21 season would be played with 22 teams with the last four to be relegated. https://t.co/iAbUrgBA7H
— Stefan Buczko (@StefanBuczko) March 12, 2020
On the Wolves bench is Olympiakos’ best player from the first half of the season, Daniel Podence, which tells you plenty about the relative clout these two now hold in the wider picture.
Maybe football, as art, can still find a way to keep us all happy. Odion Ighalo has scored a quite stupendous goal for Manchester United tonight and they lead 2-0 in Linz. Join Simon Burnton:
Team news
Olympiakos: Sa; Elabdellaoui, Semedo, Ba, Tsimikas; Guilherme, Camara, Bouchalakis; Masouras, El Arabi, Valbuena. Subs: Allain, Fortounis, Lovera, Torosidis, Cisse, Gaspar, Randjelovic.
Wolves: Patricio; Boly, Coady, Saiss; Doherty, Neves, Moutinho, Vinagre; Traore, Jimenez, Jota. Subs: Ruddy, Kilman, Dendoncker, Buur, Jordao, Neto, Podence.
Hello
Look, no point messing around – it’s a weird one, this, isn’t it. We can all see what’s in the post and the chances of this being the last European game we see for some weeks, at a time when it all should be coming together and getting very exciting, seem very high indeed. It’s strange, uncharted territory for all of us, a huge and stark blip in the circadian rhythm of football fandom. Other things are of course more important but, for one more night at least, the Europa League show must go on.
Wolves didn’t want to travel for this game after Evangelos Marinakis tested positive for Covid-19, but travel they ultimately had to, bafflingly. Fortunately for everyone there have been no further instances of the virus within Olympiakos. So here we are, one of Europe’s most atmospheric venues reduced to closed doors, plaintive shouts and a sense of futility, really. But the players have to fulfil it and I shall fulfil this MBM for you, too.
And look, when all this is over and we can enjoy football again in its correct context and without such a cloud hanging over us, this tie will have been important. I can’t see the Europa League won’t ultimately be completed, so to be in the last eight would be incredible for Nuno’s remarkable side and, although Olympiakos beat Arsenal two weeks ago, I didn’t really see a lot to be scared of there. On paper this is a good tie; it’s just a shame that it’s so hard to feel much towards it when there are so many unknowns in the air right now.
Do send in your emails. And your tweets. And even your *takes*. What should happen now? I’m not a doctor and you probably aren’t either, but what would you like to see happen to the European calendar as things stand? Oh, yeah, and who do you think will win in Piraeus?
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