Olympiakos v Fiorentina: Europa Conference League final – live | Europa Conference League

35 minutes: Gonzalez tries to find Kwame on the left with a spectacular diagonal from the crossbar. Too spectacular, too transverse, too diagonal. Insert.

33 minutes: Podence in more space lower left. This time he has been marked as an ambush but continues to look like Olympiakos’ most likely creative outlet.

31 minutes: Martínez Quarta long hooves in the style of the 80s. Mandragora races in and almost draws a foul from Tsolakis, who fumbles for the high ball but ends up taking it.

29 minutes: Podence, perhaps disappointed after so nearly opening Fiorentina up, it rattles in Dodo and it’s the first card of the match.

28 minutes: Podence moved to the left before turning tail and spinning Arthur around with absurd ease. His low cross found El Kaabi but Milenkovic stuck to his man and had no shot.

27 minutes: Retsos comes late to Kouamé and is quite lucky to escape booking. File under: wasn’t that kind of game.

25 minutes: Cicinho crosses into the corner from the left. Ortega meets him at the nearby post. Head shot from a small angle. The Terracciano responds very well to speed, exhaust and choke. I don’t know how this is still pointless, but here we are.

24 minutes: Fortunis and Cicinho exchange passes down the right, with the latter deflecting a deflected shot that cleared the post and won a corner.

22 minutes: Bonaventura burst clear down the left flank but failed to lift his shot over Tsolakis, who was well wide. The rebound is centered in the middle where Belotti heads home. The effort is blocked. Belotti wants a penalty, but there is no handball there.

21 minutes: Bonaventura goes for a bad clearance, just inside Olympiakos box. He opens his body and tries to get a shot into the bottom left corner. Tsolakis quells a weak shot easily enough.

20 minutes: Free kick for Olympiakos, at 35 yards. Fortunis drives it down the inside-right channel hoping to find Ibora, but the ball flies over his team-mate’s head and out of play.

19 minutes: Podence starts down the left and looks for El Kaabi in the middle but can’t find his partner on a low cross. The tournament’s leading scorer hasn’t had much of a sniff yet.

17 minutes: Fiorentina are starting to gain the upper hand here. Olympiakos didn’t do much after that early Podence strike. “Whether it’s Olympiakos or Olympiakos, it’s all Greek to me,” jokes Gary Byrne, because someone had to.

15 minutes: … ends with a goal kick, Biragi suffers a huge rush of hot blood to the leg and takes a wild corner over everyone’s heads and straight out of the game.

14 minutes: The Olympiakos the defense freezes as a unit and Kwame seizes the opportunity to latch on to a loose bouncing ball and strike from distance. The shot isn’t all but deflected to the right for another corner. The latter ended with a disallowed goal. This one…

12 minutes: Mandrake tries to do a limp Le Tissieresque curler from the edge of the box. It always goes wide right, but it would have been great if it was on target.

11 minutes: It was a great start to this match. Both teams could have easily scored. This will certainly not end without a goal. A reminder that we will have extra time and penalties if it happens.

9 minutes: Fiorentina short angle work. Biraghi does a one-two with Bonaventura and sends a low diagonal ball from the front of the box. Milenkovic meets him six yards out with a cheeky shot, rounding Tsolakis and rolling the ball into the net. But he is ambushed, as is the referee and VAR quickly agree.

8 minutes: González and Dodo combine sharply down the right, their exchange sending the Greeks into an even spin. The ball is cleared in panic for the first corner of the match. From which …

7 minutes: Cicinho crosses low from Olympiakos to the left. Mandragora hacks clean from a crowded box. Lovely open feel to this match.

5 minutes: Olympiakos takes the corner quickly, Fortunis breaks in from the right for Rodinei who is in space but can’t shoot. His low crotch is clean and Fiorentina counter, Kwame bombs down the left and finds Gonzalez on the right. Gonzalez dribbles and sets up Belotti, who takes a shot from the left. More than that and we’re going to have a good time tonight!

4 minutes: Cicinho feeds Podense from the left. Podence crosses the infield and takes a shot from the left edge of D. Terracciano sees it late but manages to round the right post.

2 minutes: A pretty lackluster start, though Fiorentina who enjoy possession more during these early exchanges. “I know Guardians boffins can handle Greek letters, so let’s just use Ολυμπιακός.” Shh, Joe Pearson, don’t give anyone any ideas, it’s hard enough with those fat fingers.

Fiorentina moves the ball. “With El Kaabi on Haalandesque 10 strikes in 8 games, can this final be called Florence vs. The Machine?” Justin Cavanagh, y’all. It’s been here all week. Try the moussaka.

The teams are out! Olympiakos is the designated home team, so they can wear their first choice colors of red and white. Fiorentina also wore red and white until, in 1928, some eejit washed the gear into the Arno, the colors merging into their now iconic purple. It’s a fine line between eejitry and genius, but in any case they’re in the second white tonight. The atmosphere at the AEK Arena hits all the right buttons for a major final, with both sets of fans making a racket as they form a very aesthetic sea of ​​red, white and purple. Not quite unlike riverside Florence all those years ago. We’re leaving in a minute!

Olympiakos striker Ayoub El Kaabi is the leading goalscorer in this year’s Conference League. He found the back of the net ten times in eight games, a significantly higher haul than the best Fiorentina can offer, four of Nicolas Gonzalez’s 12. However, the Viola have spread it a little further: 12 members of their squad have scored during this campaign compared to Olympiakos’ seven. So it’s swings and circular motions.

Style guide. The Guardian, along with the BBC it seems, spell the name of our Greek heroes as Olympiakos. Other editorial institutions say “eyes!” and instead write it as Olympiakos; these include UEFA, the Press Association (who provide our automated results feed at the top of the page) and, er, the club itself. So why do we do what we do? Let our style guru, production editor and general font of all knowledge Philip Cornwall explain.

It is debatable, transliteration is always debatable. I inherited a keyword spelled this way, we always use Kos, not Kos for the island, the 2000 Olympic champion turned doping test evader in 2003 calls himself Kostas Kenteris. But if I didn’t have 64 other things to think about, I could change that to Olympiakos.

Here it is. The answer to a question you almost certainly weren’t going to ask, only coming at the cost of annoying the busiest person in the entire company. I think he’ll forgive me in a month or two. The things I do for you, dear reader.

Olympiakos finished third in Super League Greece 1 this season thanks to a draw against Panathinaikos on the final day. The last edition of the Eternal Enemies Derby finished 2-2, Olympiakos coming back from two goals down thanks to late goals from Daniel Podenche and Stevan Jovetic. Podence then managed to get kicked off, but that doesn’t carry over into the UEFA competition. They make three changes to their starting 11 after the ruckus: Francisco Ortega, Chiquinho and Vicente Iborra come on, Andre Horta, Joao Carvalho and Omar Richards remain on the bench.

Fiorentina are not done with their Serie A duties yet – they play Europa League champions Atalanta on Sunday – but whatever happens there, they will finish eighth. Their penultimate game was in Cagliari last Thursday; they won 3–2, turning things around in the final two minutes with an equalizer from Nicolas Gonzalez and a penalty from Arthur. Arthur, a 13-minute Liverpool legend, is one of four called up in the starting XI after this game; Nicolas Gonzalez, Lucas Martinez Cuarta and Christian Quame also star. Jonathan Iacone, Luca Ranieri and Antonin Barak remain on the bench, while Gaetano Castrovilli is out.

Olympiakos: Tsolakis, Rodiney, Retsos, Carmo, Ortega, Jese, Iborra, Daniel Podense, Chiquinho, Fortunis, El Kaabi.
Subs: Paschalakis, Andre Horta, El Arabi, Alexandropoulos, Quinney, Masouras, Joao Carvalho, Jovetic, Richards, Apostolopoulos, Ndoi, Papadoudis.

Fiorentina: Terraciano, Dodo, Milenkovic, Martinez, Biragi, Arthur, Mandragora, Gonzalez, Bonaventura, Quame, Belotti.
Reserves: Lopez, Beltran, Iacone, Ranieri, Nzola, Infantino, Faraoni, Duncan, Kayode, Christensen, Parisi, Barak.

Referee: Artur Soares Dias (Portugal).

Several major narrative threads hang over the AEK Arena tonight and are just begging to be tied up. Will Olympiakos become the first Greek team to win a major European club trophy? They will take possession of Manchester United’s greatest recent trophy if they do so, having bounced back from a 4-1 home defeat by Maccabi Tel Aviv in the last 16 and hammering six goals past promoted Aston Villa in the semi-finals. Or maybe Fiorentina lifted their first European trophy in 63 years since the 1961 Cup Winners’ Cup? They will extend their unbeaten run on the continent to 14 games if they succeed, with their last defeat coming in last season’s final against West Ham. If they go one step further this time, they will honor their late general manager Joe Barone, who died in March.

The Viola are slight favorites with the bookies to follow Roma and the Hammers as champions in UEFA’s sparkling new competition. But Olympiacos of Piraeus, part of Greater Athens, they have home advantage – sort of at the ground of their city rivals AEK Athens – and are coached by a man who won last year’s Europa League, Jose Luis Mendilibar, a former Sevilla player. So this is set to be a cracker. We hope he succeeds. Threading starts at 20:00 BST, 22:00 local time. It’s on!