In June 2022, a few weeks before the team planning kicked off, betting algorithms gave out super favorites to win the next championship for Olympiacos (1.55), second PAOK (4), third AEK (7.50) and fourth “Panathinaikos” (13). ).

Just two games after the start of the race, at the end of August, Panathinaikos moved up the stakes scale below Olympiacos, in the fourth game they were already considered “favorites” and at the end of the first round they held the scepter with a figure of 1.55 against 4.50 for AEK, 5.25 for Olympiacos and 25 for PAOK.

The attentive reader will ask the question: “Well, with a difference of 8 points from AEK and 12 from Olympiacos, isn’t the gap in the performance of the bet proportional?” And he will be right. Although the difference in scores looked like “safety”, there were a number of reasons that, as it turned out, rightly constrained the assessments of the experts. Pick up:

• Complex schedule. In the first round, Panathinaikos played 8 matches at home and only 5 away. In the second round, the opposite will happen, while it should be noted that two derbies with AEK and Olympiacos are far from Leoforos. Already in the first away match with Ionikos, 2 points were lost, and then… one point was saved against OFI in Leoforos. The difference with AEK has been reduced to 4, and the two teams now share the title of favorite in terms of betting odds (both 2.25, Olympiacos 7).

• January crash test. The draw has left the dawn of 2023 looking like an uphill battle that could also become a mountain if Panathinaikos eliminates Volos in the Cup and finds PAOK favorites Kalamata in front of them. In the worst – and very likely – scenario, within 25 days, Panathinaikos will play 8 matches – 4 derbies, of which 6 are away to Leoforos, and 5 are outside of Attica! Here, not to accuse the author of exaggeration: 3.1 Levadeakos out, 8.1 AEK out, 11.1 Volos out (Cup), 15.1 Pas Ioannina out, 18.1 PAOK (Cup), 22.1 PAOK out, 25.1 PAOK (Cup), 29.1 Asteras Tripoli out ( venues for cup matches are expected to be determined at a later date).

• The others are also playing.. AEK has everything you need: he plays – often – impressive football, he has some top-class players, a deeper squad than Panathinaikos, and, of course, he plays in his new stadium, whose shares have skyrocketed. to heaven. market for fan enthusiasm. On the other hand, Olympiacos and PAOK, both due to the instability of the competition and the distance from the top of the points, are not yet convinced that they can claim the title, but this year the second place leads to the Champions League qualifiers . , so for sure they will pursue each degree to the end. And the food whets the appetite…

In the first round, Panathinaikos played 8 matches at home and only 5 away. In the second round, the opposite will happen, and Leoforos is far from the derby with AEK and Olympiacos.

• Champion selection via playoffs. The 8-point lead has been maintained for quite some time, allowing the team and fans to cement – perhaps a little too much – the favourite, but after the end of the regular season, 10 derby-filled games will decide the champion. Therefore, it is possible that at this time, fluctuations in the difference between PAO and AEK give rise to ratings from a correspondingly fan’s point of view (“8 points are hard to gnaw through,” Panathinaikos said until recently, “4 are easily scattered”, AEK fans answered after just a week), but logic dictates that at the end of the regular season, if there is any difference between one and two wins, then a team in better shape will have a serious chance, even if they are trailing by points.

• Inexperience. The last time Panathinaikos won the championship was in 2010. The two goblets he added to his trophy in later years were another reminder of his size, which for a long time seemed to be locked into a tight suit. After big storms, competitive and financial, now this is a team that is struggling, but bearing the burden of a prolonged drought and a deafening “want” of the fans.

These are the facts and for sure, if you are a neutral or an opponent, or even if you just landed in Venizelos after five years of living somewhere without the Internet and you mean the decrepit Panathinaikos of 2017, you will clearly think “um, yes, pale I see.” But football is beyond analysis – it’s passion, charm, enthusiasm, faith – everything that makes it something more than just a sport. Arsene Wenger said that in addition to the budget, if the players of the team do not believe in the plan, they doomed to fail, a forerunner of the popular “trust the process” motto that was later adopted by the 76ers in the NBA.

So if Panathinaikos has an advantage this year, it is precisely this: his “planets” have converged and now everyone believes in the plan. In the past, wishing to tease his opponents, as well as describe their dead ends in a Freudian way, Panathinaikos said: “Give the Olympians flattery, the AEKcides hope, and discord for us…”. This year’s goal scored (in every match) Leoforos remains scored in the trials. And he was acquitted, both in the derby with Olympiacos and in the match with OFI, where there were a few seconds before the final whistle before defeat. But he was pushed away.

It seems unnecessary, but this text will inevitably end up in the cliché of the last few months: the reason Panathinaikos thinks it has a name is Ivan Jovanovic, and he earned that conviction by going through fire and iron. Last year, in the first round, Panathinaikos was fifth with 20 points (this year 37), did not win on the road (this year 5 out of 5) and although the tribune showed tolerance, a sensitive ear was able to catch a deafening murmur. This year, everyone – fans, fans, managers, conscientious reporters and strict commentators – made sure that “Ivan knows.” The results helped up to a certain point, but so did their analysis.

In the summer, fans’ demand for a “player for every position” was definitely not satisfied, because 9 out of 10 applicants did not pass through the coaching sieve. In addition, this annoyingly meticulous resume check, which sometimes also leads to transfer “wrecks”, is the only mistake that the team’s thirsty friends attribute to Jovanovic, but now they have learned to live with it.

Delayed transfers and a black cloud that had been hanging over Leforo for several months and a downpour of injuries forced Panathinaikos to start the season with makeup flaws, but the first victories dispelled the tension, and the following strengthened faith in the Ivan Plan. And if he played the first 5 games with the “seconds” in defense? Passive, only 1 goal. What if MVP Aitor, who played 9 games, 8 goals and 2 assists, was seriously injured? Panathinaikos “found” a goal and an assist from Palacios. When did he get hurt too? 7 points in a row – thanks to the actions and goals of Fotis Ioannidis, who, although he is appreciated by the tribune, would have preferred a “better second striker”, but his coach has a different opinion.

Jovanovic’s Panathinaikos are not an impressive team of “game changers” who will win the match in two moves, but a solid set of very good, good and less good players who complement each other to perform consistently under pressure. and absence. Proof; “AEK plays the ball best of all,” many say, and indeed the “yellow-blacks” have impressive breaks in games, but it was the always “caught” Panathinaikos that broke the counterattack in the first round: better in attack (24 goals against 23 AEK), better defensively (4 goals vs. 5), first place in creating quality chances per final average (0.15 xGoals vs. 0.12 for AEK), better blocking, allowed its opponents the least number of quality finals (8 .33 against 9.99 for AEK in the first round), first place in terms of efficiency with a coefficient of +0.69 against -3.66 for AEK (Wyscout platform data from gazzetta.gr).

And the West of 2022 may have been marked by disastrous results, demonstrated squad weaknesses (transfer reinforcement is one way) and placed the team in the awkward position of managing a crisis, but the tougher ones could certainly have foreseen that the frantic move in the first round would have gone somewhere “climbed in”. After all, Panathinaikos is not the most expensive team in the League, nor is it the most ostentatious. But she has the right to say that a year later she is the most proven. And he finds antidotes in difficulties, perhaps because his architect identified weaknesses before opponents began to successfully track them, building a “Plan B” for each problem in a timely manner.

The resumption of the championship has stumped the naysayers, worrying even the moderates, but as long as the Panathinaikos organization maintains “confidence in the method”, it will continue to claim the title with pretensions. After all, that was his “weapon” from the start: the plan.