Unpredictable AEK have tools to test to Hearts

THE news that AEK Athens had been drawn to play against Hearts in the third qualifying round of the Champions League was met with barely a murmur in the Greek capital on Friday.

This is no reflection on the respective merits of either team, but more to do with the fact that Friday was Exodus Day, the day when around one and a half million Athenians clamber into their cars and head off to their summer homes. Friday was the day when Greece went on holiday and, AEK fans or not, they were more interested in traffic and ferry reports than what the AEK coach Lorenzo Serra Ferrer had to say about the draw.

Frankly, they made a wise choice because the 53-year-old Spaniard, who has only just taken over from the Portuguese Fernando Santos, was hardly worth staying at home for.

"It will be an open game and we have to respect the opposition," he said. "It is 50-50, but I don't think Hearts will have a greater desire than AEK to get through..." You get the drift.

The fact is that AEK are a very difficult team to predict, especially as the league season doesn't start until August 19. They qualified for the Champions League by virtue of finishing second to Olympiakos in the championship last season and they were also runners-up to the double winners in the Greek Cup.

They played some neat football but were solid rather than glamorous and relied heavily on Greece midfielder Costas Katsouranis, not just for working the engine room but also for coming up with important goals. He has now gone, following Santos to Benfica, and his absence leaves an immense hole in a side that was already pretty thin. Fair game to Santos, however. When he returned to AEK two years ago, the team were in serious trouble. Former player Demis Nikolaidis, a team-mate of Hearts defender Takis Fyssas in Greece's Euro 2004 squad, had given up playing in order to set up a consortium to take over the club and rescue it from financial oblivion.

In spite of successfully using a loophole in the law which eased the immediate problem of a debts bill in the region of €100m, there was not a lot of cash to play with which meant that Santos did what he had to do with the limited resources available to him. So when Ferrer says that Hearts will be hard-pushed to match AEK's desire to win he is not kidding. The club know that this will be their most important fixture of the season. Sure, lose and they still qualify for the UEFA Cup but win it and they are guaranteed around €10m even if they lose every game and fail to score a goal.

AEK's defence looks sound on paper although goalkeeper Stefano Sorrentino is eager to return to Italy. Traianos Dellas, a commanding presence during Euro 2004, is the anchor man at the back along with feisty Italian Bruno Cirillo.

AEK have won 11 league championships, the last in 1994 and that side went on to beat Rangers twice in the 1994-5 Champions League. Their best achievement in European football, however, was reaching the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup in 1976-7.

The key man up front these days, however, is thoroughbred Greek Nikos Lymberopoulos. The 30-year-old spent seven seasons with Panathinaikos before being off-loaded to AEK three years ago. His form last season was good enough to earn him a recall to the Greek national team.

Doubtless, Nikolaidis, Dellas and Lymberopoulos will all be on the phone to their old friend Fyssas to check up on Hearts in the coming days, but it will be no surprise if they sit tight in Edinburgh and wait to bring Hearts to a packed Olympic Stadium on a hot evening in Athens. That is a serious test of any football team.

Taken from the Scotsman