AEK-Bruges: The “Union” aims to continue to improve – Unofficial debut for Brignoli

AEK plays its third friendly at noon on Saturday (6/7). The “Union”, which is currently in Burg-Haamstad, the Netherlands, in the second part of its main stage of preparation, will go to Belgium. Where he will face on 15:00 Greek time on Club Brugge in the state-of-the-art facilities of its training center.

Another… marathon test for the “yellow and black”, against another very difficult opponent (the strongest, theoretically, so far).

The match will be televised from Cosmote Sport 1 HD and radio by News Bulletin 247while there will be live updates from sport-fm.gr.

The duration, therefore, of the friendly will be 120′ (after a slight variation, as it was originally scheduled for three 45-minute sessions). Specifically, it will be held in two halves of 45 minutes and an intermediate part half an hourwith the breaks between halves being 15 minutes.

Opponent of the “Union” Belgian champion, which on May 26 celebrated the 19th championship in its history. It should be remembered that he eliminated PAOK in the quarter-final phase of the Europa Conference League. On her bench, she continues Nicky Hayen, who at the end of the season assumed the duties of official coach. Of course, a few days ago “ours” also moved to her classes Christos Tzolis (versus 6.5 million euros)!

Brugge started their preparations on June 21, while their league duties begin on July 20. Last Saturday (29/6), she played her first friendly match and with a young lineup drew 1-1 against FC Knokke.

In their first friendly, AEK suffered heavy defeat (6-0, 28/6) by Alkmaar. In a match in which the “Union” had the “mitigator” of many absences and in which it played a key role – in terms of the extent of the score – the efficiency of the Dutch contrasted with its own inefficiency. If and in any case her performance was poor.

However, in the second test against, clearly weaker, Belgium Berschotlast Wednesday (3/7), showed signs of improvementprevailing 3-0.

In the first hour of the…marathon friendly (lasting four half hours) – that is, when the players of the first team competed – the “yellow and black” had a mostly positive image. They pressed well, pressed the area and created phases. They had, as top scorers, Galanopoulos (9′) and Zini (15′) who, apart from their goals, were more than positive. The first – who also had a crossbar (21′) – was treading a lot of territory, while the second created problems for the opposing defense with nice actions. However, at the same time, there was no lack of problems at the back, with “Enos” receiving phases on the back of its defense, but having Theoharis on a good day.

In the third and fourth half hours, the players of AEK B’ actually played, who were in the mood, trying to move the ball around, but without creating enough situations. An important exception was the 3-0 phase in the 79th minute, with Golfino scoring after a wonderful team effort. However, just like the “big ones”, they also showed improvement compared to the clearly more difficult friendly against Alkmaar.

Regarding today’s friendly, Matias Almeida is expected to play for the Alberto Brignoli and Nordin Amrabad, who have been integrated since Wednesday (3/7) in the preparation of the “yellow and black”, with the Italian goalkeeper thus making his unofficial debut with the “two-headed”. He will also take part in a friendly for the first time Robert Ljubisicwho overcame the annoyances that plagued him.

From then on, out of battle is given o Sotiris Tsilouliswho has suffered a sprain, while his condition remains to be seen Paolo Fernandez who has missed the last two training sessions due to the discomfort he got in the friendly match with Berschot. Besides O Alexis Golfinoswho also got hit, in the leg, against the Belgians, as of course international (Vida, Gacinovic, Szymanski, Zuber, Pineda and Cullens, with the first three expected in the Netherlands tomorrow, 7/7).

Yesterday the “two-headed” players only had morning training and in the afternoon they took a breather, in view of today’s test, having a video analysis with Matias Almeida and his colleagues.