A friendly win over Veria with new faces on show
PAOK clinched a 1-0 friendly win over Veria on Saturday (04.09) thanks to a penalty converted by Shinji Kagawa with a week to go before the start of the Super League.
Razvan Lucescu had the opportunity to see his players in action before the Super League premiere next weekend and also get a first taste of newcomers Mitrita, Sidcley and Akpom .
With both teams coming into the match on the back of a week featuring double training sessions and a lot of workload, the match understandably did not have a great rhythm, nor many goalscoring opportunities overall.
The phase of play that decided the outcome of the match came in the 69th minute. Biseswar was fouled inside the penalty area and Kagawa was the man charged with taking the resulting spot-kick, and the Japanese made no mistake from 12 yards.
In the final stages, PAOK goalkeeper Zivko Zivkovic made two good saves from headers, while at the other end two shots from Vieirinha and Murg failed to hit the target, and the score remained 1-0 to the visitors.
PAOK’s lineup:
Zivkovic, Taylor, Crespo (46′ Zilo), Varela (46′ Giaxis), Sidcley, Schwab, Esiti, Kagawa (72′ Vieirinha), Mitrita (68′ Biseswar), Murg, Akpom.
