Panathinaikos boss Rui Vitoria believes last night's defeat to Rangers was not truly reflective of both sides.
The home side were not at their best in the first half but struck early in the second through a sublime Findlay Curtis effort. The Greeks were then reduced to ten men when Giorgos Vagiannidis was ordered off for a second yellow, making their task even harder.
Djeidi Gassama scored on his competitive debut to double the advantage and Rangers now hold all the aces going into the second leg in Athens.
The visitors did miss chances to make the scoreline more bearable from their point of view. And their Portuguese manager insists they were the better side up until the red card, while admitting they must be more clinical.
Speaking in his post-match press conference, he said: "I believe that this game can be divided in two parts. One part when we were 11 against 11, and the other part when we stayed with one player less.
"So I believe that in this level that we speak, the Champions League level, I believe that the first part of the game was excellently played by by our side. We created very, very good opportunities.
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"The only thing that a coach can be sad about is losing this type of opportunities.
"I believe that we came here in a very difficult stadium, but we were not afraid of the game. We entered very, very good.
"We tried to press our opponent high. We tried to create difficulties for them. We created a lot of very, very good opportunities to score even inside their small box.
"But in this level you must score from the opportunities that you create. It's very probable that you will be penalised by it. And so it so it happened today.
"I believe that it's very difficult for a team to stay with one player less for so much time in this period of time because we are speaking about the beginning of the season in a very difficult pitch.
"And with a very, very big effort from the physical part of our players until that point.
"If someone stays only on the last 20 or 30 minutes and keeps an image of that part where it's true that Rangers tried to press us and score score goals.
"It's not correct to keep this last image because I believe that my team showed great capacity, great quality and great great performance until that point we stayed with one player less.
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Filip Duricic is insistent Panathinaikos will still progress through the tie. His manager was not quite as forthright in making a prediction but is still confident in his team's chances.
"We will never give up, we will never quit," he added. "We'll try to do everything in order to pass this qualifying round, out of respect of ourselves and of the performance that we made.
"And given the fact that we will have the support of our fans in in Athens, and I will I want to take this opportunity to thank every fan that was here today to to support them because we felt this support throughout the game.
"I just want to promise that we will do everything in order to pass this preliminary phase."
