Bordeaux vs Olympiakos Preview UEFA Champions League Preview 17/03/2010

The numbers heavily favour Bordeaux, managed by former French international Laurent Blanc

Preview Bordeaux vs Olympiakos Preview UEFA Champions League 17/03/2010

Bordeaux vs Olympiakos Match Kick-off time 20.45 CET hours, Stade Chaban Delmas, French Champions Bordeaux heavy favourites against Greek Olympiakos. French champions Girondins Bordeaux have taken over after a decade of national domination by Olympique Lyon and can become the second French side Wednesday to qualify for this years quarter finals of the Champions League. After their 1-0 away win against Greek champions Olympiakos damage control is all that is needed.

The numbers heavily favour Bordeaux, managed by former French international Laurent Blanc. The French have won all group stage matches at home, coming in first in group A, ahead of European powerhouses Bayern Munich and Juventus. One might call Bordeaux the biggest sensation of this years Champions League edition, and Laurent Blanc is well aware of that. ,,Most years the same four teams play the semi-finals. This season we might see a surprise”, says the coach who built a strong team around prodigy Yoann Gourcuff, who seems on his way to become an international star despite his failure at AC Milan. The French side is fit and ready, missing only defender Marc Planus to a knee injury.

Olympiakos is a a different story altogether. They have been playing badly in the Greek league for the past couple of weeks, and have tumbled to third position, seven points behind frontrunners Panathinaikos. They qualified from what was arguably the weakest group in the first round of the Champions League, edging ahead of Belgian Standard Liege and Dutch champions AZAlkmaar with a negative 4-5 goal difference. In order to advance to the last eight the Greek side will gave to score at least one away goal and they haven’t done that in their Champions League campaign yet, losing 2-0 at both Arsenal and Standard and drawing 0-0 in Alkmaar.

Few optimistic opinions are thus being heard from the Greek camp, apart from cliché’s like the ball is round and we´re only halfway the eliminatory. Olympiakos coach, Serbian

Božidar Bandović, will have to miss Diogo (hamstring injury) and Dudu and Didier Domi to foot lesions.




Onno van Keulen
Barcelona Reporter.com


Last Time the two teams Played





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