PAOK – Olympiakos: dead fishes and dozens of pyros in Greek Cup Semi-final

Last Wednesday the Second Leg of the Greek Cup Semi-final between PAOK FC and Olympiacos FC was played at Toumba Stadium of Thessalonoki.
The first leg in Athens had ended 2-1 to Olympiacos FC, and the pre-match atmosphere had been quite tense for days, considering that there’s a longstanding fierce rivalry between the two clubs.
In Thessaloníki the game started with a one-hour-delay because of two main “unconventional” reasons that now we’re going to explain you.
First of all, when Olympiacos players entered the pitch, they found out that PAOK FC ultras had thrown a lot of dead anchovies (*) on their bench in order to intimidate them: so several people and several minutes were needed to clean the area where the red and White footballers would have sitted, so the kick-off was delayed.
Then, when the teams entered the pitch and the match was ready to start, PAOK FC fans lighted dozens of red pyros, that created an atmosphere quite similar, we suppouse, to hell, and left a thick blanket of fog that dissolved only several minutes later.

Finally these intimidations have been quite useful, because the match ended 1-0 to PAOK FC thanks to a Stefanos Athanasiadis‘s goal, and the team from Thessaloníki will play the Final in Athens against Panathinaikos FC in another very tense match, but probably a Derby between Olympiakos and Panathinaikos would have been even more tense.

(*) Why did PAOK FC ultras throw anchovies?
In Greece Olympiakos fans are nicknamed ”Gavros“, that is the greek word for anchovies, by other supporters, because Olympiacos FC is from Piraeus, the port of Athens, an area in which, few time ago, the fisherman was the most common job !