Hooray For The Birthday Boy…(And Un Update On Burns)

By: Chris Paraskevas | February 14th, 2009

Join me as I indulge in one of life’s cake-sharing rituals to celebrate the 18th birthday of Panagiotis Tachtsidis.

Never one to get particularly excited about the fact that the Earth has revolved around the Sun once more during someone’s existence, I’ll reserve special braise for the AEK youth product who gave his side a three points that might make the difference between UEFA Champions League football and UEFA Cup in the long term (and the financial implications that go with it).

His 92nd minute winner – a brilliant turn and shot from the edge of the area after a typically determined flick-on from Sotiris Kyrgiakos – upstaged the out-of-touch Ismael Blanco and persistent but frustrating Rafik Djebbour.

Was this win against the league’s cellar dwellers deserved? Perhaps by virtue only of the fact that the team never lost their sense of adventure despite an inability to break down their humble opponents, for whom captain Giannis Katsikis could have scored a potential winner during the second half.

It wasn’t meant to be for a side now seemingly consigned to relegation, as AEK kept alive their hopes of a top-two finish by season’s end.

Perhaps they should play their teenagers more often?

PS. We’ll end this party with the customary “Lollie Bag” (For those trans-Atlantic blog followers, the Australian version of the small bags of candy and assorted fiddly-bits that are handed out at the end of children’s parties) in which you find Nathan Burns preparing to come on for his first appearance for the Greek giants, only to be told to sit back down after having been stripped and ready to enter the field of play on the sidelines.

At least we saw him in an AEK jersey, though…

PS…2…And apologies to all those who saw me label Tachtsidis as a “16 year-old” in my initial report on the match on Goal. Even the most simple tasks – such as checking the age of a player on the club website – become that much more difficult when one has been writing articles on Greek football on just an hour’s sleep until 6 am…