Pre register at the new big football site www.11×2.com today.  Panathinaikos Athens vs Villarreal CF  LIVE here Panathinaikos Athens vs Villarreal CF Highlights here.

.Arsenal Transfered In: Thomas Vermaelen (Ajax, £11m), Damian Martinez (Club Athletico Independiente, £1.3m), Jamie Edge (Cheltenham, undisc) Transfered Out: Abu Ogogo (Dag & Red, free), Amaury Bischoff (Academica de Coimbra, free), Emmanuel Adebayor (Man C, £25m), Kolo Toure (Man C, £14m), Jay Simpson (QPR, loan), James Dunne (Exeter, free), Rui Fonte (Lisbon, free), Rene Steer (Oldham, free), [.

Here are the latest rumors circulating about AEK: Nikolaos Karabellas, 24-year-old left back currently playing with Aris, has agreed to sign for AEK for three years. Georgios Fotikas, 27-year old Midfielder currently playing for Larissa (and formerly of Kilmarnock FC of the Scottish Premier League) is set to join AEK over the Summer as well.

Well, the deal for Gaxa, the South African right back we were previously close to signing, has fallen through. We were close to signing him at one point but his club in South Africa continued to raise their asking price until it reached one million euros. There was no way AEK was going to spend so much so instead we have signed the second right back that we were looking at, Carlos Araujo.

Those expecting to see Kristian Nemeth on the Anfield pitch this season will have to wait another year, after the Hungarian striker was loaned to AEK Athens for the season.

I'm not quite sure what I think of this loan move.

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UEFA has a nice piece up on the Roger Guerreiro signing.

And the BBC has an article up on the Krisztian Nemeth loan deal with Liverpool.

ESPN says that Everton face a tricky trip to Athens to play us, but the Liverpool Daily Post seems a bit less worried. We'll show 'em.

The FIFA Under-20 World Cup starts tomorrow (Thursday) in Egypt, and ESPN has identified eleven players it believes will stand-out in the tournament. Among them is our own Krisztian Nemeth:

Krisztian Nemeth (Hungary & Liverpool)
Krisztian Nemeth joins Liverpool team-mates Andras Simon and keeper Peter Gulacsi in the Hungary squad, although he is currently on loan to Greek side AEK Athens.

So, were going to be heading to Romania on the 20th of August to play Vaslui. We will play them again on the 27th of August, this time in Athens.

A pretty good draw for us. We could have gotten Red Star from Serbia, who I believe could have caused us some trouble, but Im somewhat confident now that we will get through to the group stages.

Eddie Johnson and Fulham head east for a date with Bulgarian opposition CSKA Sofia while Tim Howard will man Everton's goal when Greek team AEK Athens pay a visit to Goodison Park.

Due to the fires noetheast of Athens, the two matches in Attiki, the AEK-Olympiakos derby and the Panionios-PAOK match, have both been postponed.

It was unfortunate, as I was excited about the match, but it was a needed desicion. Hopefully, nobody will be killed by these fires, and I really hope it gets under control soon.

Liverpool have allowed Hungarian strike duo Krisztian Nemeth and Andras Simon to leave the club on loan for the remainder of the season.
20-year-old Nemeth will join Greek side AEK Athens while Simon is heading for the Spanish second division with Cordoba CF.
Both players initially signed on at Anfield from MTK Hungaria back in 2007 although they have so far been unable to make a competitive appearance for Rafael Benitez's first team.

On a chilly night in Donetsk, the Greek National Team warmed the hearts of its supporters as Dimitrios Salpingidis netted a quality strike to post a 1-0 win over Ukraine at the Donbass Arena on Wednesday. After a score-less draw in Athens on Saturday, Greece secured their spot in next summer's

Hungarian striker may decide to stick it out in Greece.

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Krisztian Nemeth admits that he would seriously think about making his loan move to AEK Athens permanent.

Well, Arsenal goes down 1-0 to Olympiakos. For all the talk about how we might be disrespecting the competition by fielding a team of players in their teens and early 20s, it sounds like they went out there and put on a pretty good performance. Playing Olympiakos in Athens is never easy, and a 1-0 loss is nothing to be ashamed of.

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The squad has been anounced for tomorrow's game.

As I was hoping earlier last week, Kyrgiakos will not play at this game. Neither will Alexopoulos due to being suspended (along with Scocco and Pelletieri). Since Juanfran is injured, and neither Alexopoulos or Kyrgiakos will be playing it is possible that we might see N'Siambamfumu, our recently aquired French centre back, play!

AEK managed to beat PAOK 1-0 in a sold out Toumba satidum.

This is another great result for us and hopefully we will win the next three matches which will guarantee us a Champions League qualifying spot. Our two toughest games (in theory) are now over and we managed to come out with four out of a total of six possible points from the two fixtures.

Olympiacos F.C. (Greek: .Α.Ε. Ολυμπιακός), also known as simply Olympiacos, Olympiacos Piraeus or with its full name Olympiacos C.F.P. (Greek: Oλυμπιακός Σύνδεσμος Φιλάθλων ειραιώς), is a Greek football club that is part of Olympiacos CFP, based in Piraeus, Athens.

Panathinaikos and Atlético Madrid played a marvelous 1st leg qualifying match for the Champions League, which was a great preview for the CL. In Athens, Atlético Madrid showed its attacking force and with goals by Maxi Rodriguez, Diego Forlán and Sergio "Kun"Agüero, won a very useful 3-2 against a Panathinaikos side that will surely be a qualitative asset in the Europa League (or of course, in

Liverpool's newest recruit Sotirios Kyrgiakos has claimed that he joined the Reds because he believes they are the best club in Europe.
The defender swapped AEK Athens for Anfield this week for a fee in the region of €3 million and he is clearly delighted with his decision.
Speaking in an interview with the club's official website, www.

It has been relatively quiet around Liverpool recently. I think everyone is still speechless from the Villa catastrophe. A few things of note:

We'll be facing Lyon, Fiorentina, and Debreceni in the group stages. Debre-who? They are the league champs from Hungary. Personally, I am not familiar in the least with Hungarian football and have no idea how much of a threat they will be.

Rafael Benitez insists he will not be at war with the latest Chelsea manager, Carlo Ancelotti, claiming he considers the Italian a coaching "magician".
Benitez's verbal battles with former Blues boss Jose Mourinho were a major feature of domestic and European battles between the teams in previous years.

The European qualifying phase for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa comes to a close over the next week with six group winners and the identities of several play-off contenders still to be decided.

Spain and England will approach their final two fixtures safe in the knowledge that their place in next summer's finals is secure, as is the Netherlands' after they completed their campaign last month, several of the continent's leading nations still have work to do.

Everton boss David Moyes has praised his Everton side ahead of their tricky away trip to Portugal to square off against Benfica in the Europa League. Everton are missing ten players for the trip, but Moyes is confident the Toffees have the quality to cope.

Everton knew that they would be without the injured Steven Pienaar, Phil Neville, Phil Jagielka, Mikel Arteta, James Vaughan, and Victor Anichebe.

Ukraine and Greece head into the 2nd leg encounter after a goalless draw at Athens. Ukraine's' captain Andry Shevchenko knows that this is the last chance for him for a final World Cup appearance and it's the best occasion to earn the qualification berth in front of the home fans. A nerve tingling encounter awaits the [.

Krisztian Nemeth admits that he would seriously think about making his loan move to AEK Athens permanent.
The Liverpool forward is on a season-long loan and after two seasons at Anfield without any first-team opportunities is considering his options.
Despite injury disrupting his time on Merseyside the 20-year-old is seemingly enjoying a change of fortune in Greece having scored three goals in seven league games.

Well, that's it then. Everton traveled to Athens, scored their single goal quickly and then hunkered down behind the ball, conceded the bulk of possession and showed how hard it is to break down a defensively organized side.

We conceded early, due to poor marking. It looked to me like Gorgeas just let his man slide right by him on the wing, receive a lay-off pass and fire it into the ol'onion bag.

An uninspired performance by AEK means that second place is now slipping out of reach for this season.

AEK, who had many of its main players (Kyrgiakos, Kafes, Scocco, Juanfran, Nsaliwa) remain in Athens due to either cards or injury, barely managed to get one point in Komotini today after a rather low class performance by the team.

Vassilis Pliatsikas, who received some play time with Donis but little with Bajevic is no longer with AEK. Schalke have signed him for a price within the range of 300,000-400,000 euros. Its a good move for him, assuming he manages to impress and therefore earn some playing time. Greeks often seem to play quite well in Germany (Gekas, Liberopoulos, and many others) so hopefully he will play well there as well.

Those expecting to see Kristian Nemeth on the Anfield pitch this season will have to wait another year, after the Hungarian striker was loaned to AEK Athens for the season.

I'm not quite sure what I think of this loan move.

read more

So we're back in action today with a big match against Olympiakos. At the moment, we are co-group leaders after we had that erm..."interesting" win over Standard and Olympiakos dispatched AZ. A win and 3 points today would put us well and truly in control of the group. As I've discussed before, the last match of the group stage for us is playing Olympiakos in Athens, which is always a tricky fixture, and I'd rather not have our knockout stage qualification depend on getting a result out of that match.

For this weeks offering I thought we would re-visit one of the all time great sides. AC Milan, under the guidance of a certain Fabio Capello, swept all before them in the early 90s. That included an emphatic Champions League win over Barcelona at the Olympic Stadium in Athens on May 18 1994, a game which is often considered to be one of the greatest ever performances by a side in the Champions League.

New Zealand, Nigeria and Cameroon all joined the list of qualifiers today, whilst Russia, France and Portugal all won the first legs of their UEFA region playoff games. The only stalemate was the goalless draw in Athens between Greece and Ukraine; Costa Rica play Uruguay in the first leg of their playoff at 02:00 GMT on Sunday so we'll have news of what happened in that one bright and early tomorrow morning.

Costa Rica 0-1 Uruguay
Crucial Lugano Goal Brings South Americans Closer To World Cup 2010
Ireland 0-1 France
Anelka Gives France Away-Goal Boost
Greece 0-0 Ukraine
Stalemate In Athens As Visitors Leave Happier
New Zealand players celebrate after booking trip to South Africa.

Everton clinched a spot in the knock out stages of the Europa League with this hard fought win in Athens.

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I know, it's not a Carling Cup match. But we appear to be treating it like a Carling Cup match, so I'm using the "Carling Cup Kids" picture.

Anyway, we travel to Olympiakos tomorrow for the final group stage match. The match is pleasantly anticlimactic. As you'll recall, when the group stage draw was done and the fixtures announced, my general sense was that we got a very good draw, but we needed to be sure and wrap up a spot in the knockout stages by the 5th match, because Greece is always a tough place to play, and we didn't want to be in the situation where we had to go to Athens and win just to get through.

After some lost playing time, harsh words, hurt feelings, and flirting with Man City, Rino Gattuso has decided to not only stay with AC Milan, but extend his contract and take a 30% pay cut (yes, it's true, now go back and read that sentence again because I don't think your eyes are bulging out of your head quite enough).