At long last, it’s here. 184 teams have taken part in this season’s Europa Conference League, from the first qualifying round to the Europa League drop-downs. KÍ of the Faroe Islands, Breiðablik of Iceland and Zrinjski Mostar of Bosnia-Herzegovina all made history by becoming their countries’ first-ever representatives in a European group stage. Kosovar side Ballkani, the breakout stars of last season, managed to qualify again – albeit to go out with more of a whimper than a bang. Ludicrous results abounded – remember AZ losing 4-3 to Zrinjski having gone 3-0 up? Denmark’s Nordsjælland beating Fenerbahçe 6-1 and Ludogorets 7-1, only to fail to qualify from their group? Now, however, only two sides remain. Olympiakos, one of Greece’s most storied clubs, take on Fiorentina, last season’s beaten finalists. Who will wake up alongside the trophy tomorrow?
The Venue
Tonight’s venue is the AEK Arena, also known as the Agia Sofia Stadium or the OPAP Arena. Located five miles north of the Athens Acropolis, Agia Sofia is named after the famous cathedral-mosque in Istanbul as a homage to AEK’s roots; the club was founded by Greek refugees who fled the city in the early 1920s in the devastating aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War. It is (as far as I can tell – I’ve never been) an attractive and atmospheric modern venue, seating over 30,000 people; it is also strikingly new, having only opened in autumn 2022 in place of the smaller Nikos Goumas Stadium that previously occupied the site.
Agia Sofia seemed a fine, if unremarkable venue when selected, in keeping with the competition’s two previous finals, which were held in Tirana (Albania) and Prague (Czechia). Olympiakos’ unexpected journey to the final has dramatically changed the situation; AEK are one of the club’s fiercest rivals, along with Panathinaikos and PAOK, and Olympiakos’ own ground is a mere 10 miles southwest of Agia Sofia. The opportunity to win a major trophy in a rival’s stadium is rare enough domestically; the chance for Olympiakos to become the first Greek club ever to win a European trophy there is virtually unprecedented. Expect fireworks, probably literally.
The Officials
Who cares? Have a beer.
Olympiakos
Road to the Final
Few people expected Olympiakos to be here tonight, presumably including most Olympiakos fans. An inconsistent domestic campaign has seen them lose out to their northern rivals PAOK in the league; an insipid Europa League group stage performance, barring one upset win at home to West Ham, saw them drop down into the Conference League knockout stages. In the first knockout round Olympiakos drew Ferencváros, who had performed strongly to finish second in an initially tough-looking group, and dispatched them 2-0 on aggregate, 1-0 in both games. So far so ordinary. Their quarter-final saw the Piraean side draw Maccabi Tel-Aviv of Israel and duly lose 4-1 at home in the first leg, a result which opened up the unedifying prospect of an Israeli club in the quarter-finals amid an ongoing genocide. Olympiakos rallied, however, pulling off a barely-believable 6-1 win at a neutral venue in Serbia in the “away” leg to squeak through 7-5 on aggregate.
Next up were Fenerbahçe, a mouth-watering cross-Aegean matchup between two immensely historic Greek and Turkish sides. The tie did not disappoint; Olympiakos won 3-2 in Piraeus only to go 1-0 down in Istanbul early in the second leg. They nevertheless dug deep, held out for extra time, and eventually won a penalty shootout that the Fenerbahçe players always looked a little daunted by. The prize? A trip to Birmingham to play Unai Emery’s Aston Villa for a place in the final.
Victory for Villa seemed, if not a foregone conclusion, then at least likely; Villa were running on fumes by this point in the season, having scraped past Lille on penalties to get this far, but Emery has a record in European knockouts that very few coaches have ever bettered. Olympiakos had other ideas. They stormed into a 2-0 lead early in the away leg, stunning Villa Park into silence. Emery’s men eventually rallied, making it 2-2 soon after half-time, only for Olympiakos to dig deep yet again and summon another two goals, Ayoub El Kaabi with a devastating hat-trick that left Villa’s high line in tatters. Heading into the home leg with a 4-2 lead, Olympiakos were suddenly favourites to progress. They made a nonsense of any pressure of expectation, however, El Kaabi scoring yet another early goal courtesy of some appalling Villa defending and then grabbing his fifth(!) of the tie late in the second half. Olympiakos won the tie 6-2 on aggregate, stunning both Villa and the wider football world. They more than deserve to be here tonight.
Key Players
Ayoub El Kaabi. The burly Moroccan forward is the Conference League’s top scorer this season with 10 goals, which is also the joint record for a single season in competition history (shared with Cyriel Dessers of Feyenoord in 2021-22). What makes this feat extraordinary rather than merely impressive is that El Kaabi has managed it in 8 games, all of them knockout ties. If he had an extra yard of pace, the 30-year-old would probably be plying his trade in a top 5 European league; instead Olympiakos fans have gotten to enjoy his particular blend of power, smart off-the-ball movement and lethal finishing. It would be a brave man who bets against him netting an 11th goal tonight, whatever the outcome. He is aided by the skill and trickery of Daniel Podence on the left wing and Olympiakos stalwart Kostas Fortounis on the right.
Fiorentina
Road to the Final
I Viola’s journey here has been less surprising and less dramatic than that of their Greek counterparts. Beaten Conference League finalists against West Ham last season, the Florentines will have been dreading the prospect of facing another English team in this season’s edition. The manner in which Olympiakos dispatched Villa will surely have prompted new concerns, however.
Fiorentina only qualified for this Conference League through external intervention, with Juventus banned from European competition this season for an accounting scam. Fiorentina, who finished 8th in last season’s Serie A, snuck in at the last instead. They have made the most of it, finishing unbeaten at the top of a group comprising the aforementioned Ferencváros, Belgium’s Genk and Čukarički of Serbia. Despite the unbeaten record, Fiorentina were rarely especially convincing – three of their six games finished as draws. Their knockout campaign has been similarly inconsistent. A Round of 16 tie against another Israeli side, Maccabi Haifa, was their reward for topping the group; the Italian side duly almost squandered it, winning 4-3 away only after going 3-2 down and then drawing 1-1 in the return leg in Firenze. Their quarter-final tie, against Viktoria Plzeň, rarely troubled the annals of modern classics, with Fiorentina unable to trouble the competition’s stingiest defence until extra time of the second leg. Within barely 15 minutes of extra time, 0-0 on aggregate became 2-0, and the semi-finals beckoned.
Fiorentina’s final opponents before the final were another Belgian side, Club Brugge, who had been tipped by yours truly as potential dark horses for a deep run into the competition before it kicked off. They lived up to the billing. Fiorentina took an early lead courtesy of a long-distance screamer from the faintly unlikely boot of winger Riccardo Sottil, for only his fourth goal of the season. Club Brugge had other ideas though, rallying first to 1-1 and then to 2-2 (after Andrea Belotti had once again put Fiorentina in the lead). It took until injury time for Fiorentina to score their third goal of the game and head to Belgium with a slender advantage. Fiorentina soon had their backs to the wall yet again in the away leg, Club Brugge levelling the tie on aggregate after 20 minutes through a scuffed Hans Vanaken effort; it took until the 85th minute for them to draw level on the night and back ahead on aggregate, through a Lucas Beltrán penalty, before their goalkeeper denied Vanaken deep into stoppage-time and broke Brugge hearts. It has not been a convincing campaign from Fiorentina, but in European competition it’s the final score that counts, not how you get there.
Key Players
Fiorentina have a slightly odd squad this season, with few in the way of standout players. One upside of this is that it makes them a harder team to predict and, therefore, play against in this sort of environment – how do you prepare for a team where no-one is truly prolific but several different players crop up every now and then? Nicolás González is I Viola‘s main creative threat and outlet from his berth on the right wing and, given Olympiakos’ paucity of left-backs, could be a difference-maker tonight. Keep an eye out also for Arthur Melo, formerly a walking punchline but now the anchor of the Fiorentina midfield and a key part of their build-up play. Nikola Milenković, at right-centre-back, and Dodô at right back are other key sources of quality, suggesting that this match may well be decided by how well Olympiakos can contain and potentially overpower that flank.
Who’s Going to Win?
My money (in both a metaphorical and a literal sense) is on Olympiakos tonight, and not just because it’s marginally less embarrassing for Villa to have been dumped out by the winners than by the runners-up. El Kaabi has been the unquestioned star of this tournament since Olympiakos arrived, and no defence except Fener’s has yet been able to come up with an answer for him. (He scored his penalty in the shootout in that tie too.) It’s also just more romantic for a competition like this to be won by a Greek than an Italian side – Roma from Italy won the inaugural competition in 2022, and West Ham from England in 2023. In 2024, in an ever more stratified European game, it would be nice to see that trend bucked.
