On Friday evening, CSKA Moscow will play their seventh Euroleague match. Dimitris Studios’ team will play in the Greek capital, Athens, where Panathinaikos play their home games. After six games, the “Army” is in fifth place in the standings, having three wins and the same number of defeats. But the Greek grandee has played only four matches this season, winning two of them.
Panathinaikos’ current place is 15th, but Georgios Vovoras’ team is one point ahead of the Moscow club on lost points.CSKA, let’s be blunt, started badly this Euroleague season. If the fiasco of the “Armenians” in the first match of the championship against Barcelona away could still be explained, the home defeat by Berlin Alba and the subsequent loss in Belgrade from “Crvena Star” was a complete surprise.
In both matches, Itudis’ team led the score and chalked up all chances to finish the fights in their favor, but for unknown reasons failed the endings of the meetings. It was possible to rehabilitate only in the last match, in which the “Armenians” outplayed the Spanish “Valencia” at home.
Panathinaikos missed the tour last week, as St. Petersburg’s “Senate” was still in quarantine. Before that, the Greek club confidently defeated Istanbul Fenerbahce at home, interrupting a series of defeats from two games. Before the start of the season, the Athenian team was hardly named among the favorites of the championship and even contenders for the eight, but now there are so many unpredictable things in the sport that it is impossible to underestimate Panathinaikos.
In the Euroleague, the teams played a decent number of games between them – 24. The advantage of the cake side is 15 wins. For the last five years, the “armymen” have alternated in Athens’s successful games with losing. Last season the Moscow club was stronger in the Greek capital with a score of 97:66.