PAOK Thessaloniki suffered a 2-1 home defeat against Panathinaikos, and Rezvan Lucescu’s team said goodbye to the title. At the end of the game, Rezvan Lucescu criticized the refereeing in the Greek championship.

Razvan LucescuPhoto: Karim JAAFAR / AFP / Profimedia

Rezvan Lucescu: “They did everything for Panathinaikos to win”

Panathinaikos opened the scoring with Bernard (’38), PAOK equalized with Augusto (’85), but the visitors won after Ioannidis converted a penalty (’90+1). Here you can see the summary of the game.

PAOK is 4th in the table, 12 points behind the first teams (AEK and Panathinaikos). Rezvan Lucescu realizes that his team can no longer win the title and blames the referees for the lost points in the final stages.

“After last year’s cup final (Panathinaikos won 1-0) I kept saying that I gave everything to Panathinaikos to win, and that is also true this season.

They are lucky, they have a good mentality. When you are protected (no referees) you play with a lot more confidence against a team like ours who always have to attack. Among the protected teams there are also teams from Athens, not necessarily in the derby, but in regular games.

I would like to be a part of such away arbitrations. You feel a different confidence when you know you won’t get yellow cards. Today we were denied a penalty for a millimeter offside.

I’m not saying it was a wrong decision, I’ll make a decision after seeing the images more clearly, but by the same logic we can also say that the three players from Asteras Tripolis were in the same position. It was a match that cost us two points (without the final score being 2-2, after PAOK led 2-0).

In Ioannina (0-0 against PAS) we had a penalty that was not awarded to us, two more points lost. With AEK (0-1), we felt that the referee was chasing us, that every mistake we made would be severely punished.

We need the support of the fans, we would be grateful to feel that they still believe in us and that they haven’t given up yet. We need to improve the motivation for such games, Panathinaikos and AEK are very good in this regard.

I am sad after this defeat, I want to walk 100 kilometers after such a result” – Rezvan Lucescu for NovaSport.

Super League of Greece, standings

1. AEK (goal difference 59-16) 72 points

2. Panathinaikos (43-13) 72

3. Olympiakos (62-22) 63

4. PAOK (51-24) 60

5. Aris (45-32) 44

6. Hair (33-49) 49.