AEK Athens were handed a heavy first-leg defeat at the hands of Rayo Vallecano to the tune of three goals to nil, leaving them with an almighty mountain to climb for the second leg in Athens next week.
It couldn’t have started any worse for the visitors. Lazaros Rota failed to properly track the run of Alvaro Garcia, whose cross found Ilias Akhomach in acres of space, who then turned the ball in effortlessly for a one-nil lead to the hosts after only two minutes.
Rayo Vallecano had an absolute field day early, exploiting AEK’s high press, whether that was the pockets of space left by Rota and Stavros Pilios in the full-back positions or through the centre of the park. As the game ticked past 20 minutes, AEK’s day seemed to get even worse, failing to properly deal with a corner that saw centre-back Florian Lejeune channel his inner centre-forward with a cheeky backheel, which appeared to have the hosts two goals up, only for VAR to intervene, noticing Unai Lopez in an offside position and supposedly impeding Thomas Strakosha’s line of sight. Yes, he did, however Strakosha was getting nowhere near the ball and gave up on trying to save it, a lucky repreieve for the away side.
Eight minutes later, AEK’s best chances to score all game came in relatively quick succession. Barnabas Varga had a header turned onto the post by the diving (in the correct way, in this instance) Augusto Batalla. Aboubakary Koita then thought he’d put the rebound in, only for his shot to be blocked by Pathe Ciss.
If AEK had one dangerous player in this game, it was Koita, and shortly after that blocked shot, he initially capitalised beautifully on a defensive mix-up in the Rayo Vallecano defensive half, only to lose his footing one-on-one with Batalla, colliding with him instead of shooting. If that wasn’t hard enough mentally for him, he found another Rayo Vallecano wall in his way after being superbly picked out by Pilios. It was simply not Koita’s day. Just as AEK were growing into the game, seeing more of the ball and trying to create openings, disaster struck. Strakosha couldn’t push Akhomach’s shot to safety, instead pushing it into the path of the alert Lopez, who doubled the lead for the home team.
AEK began the second half as they ended the first (minus the concession of a goal), seeing more possession from their hosts, but were reduced to pot shots and winning corners. Five minutes from the hour, another suckerpunch was almost delivered by Rayo Vallecano substitute Alemao, only for his shot from close range to skim the side-netting.
As 72 minutes ticked by, the most cruel of final nails was put in AEK’s coffin for this leg of the tie. As Filipe Relvas was trying to regain his footing and balance, a shot struck his arm. The on-field referee was initially sympathetic to Relvas, until VAR convinced him to change his mind, mindbogglingly so. Isi Palazon made no mistake from the spot, now making AEK’s mission akin to climbing Mount Everest. It was a truly shocking call on Relvas, it must be said. Harold Moukoudi’s misplaced tackle on Alemao, a few minutes later in the same place as the Relvas decision, looked more like a penalty. Yet VAR had the “nothing to see here” mentality, waving that decision off.
That was all she wrote in the end. Needless to say, AEK will have to rediscover their goalscoring know-how and defensive structure to have any hope of reeling in this deficit. Not to mention doing so without the suspended Luka Jovic…
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