In the beginning of the game, Panathinaikos did not seem to be bothered by the Anderlecht pressure. The greens gave extra attention to their defense and limited the Anderlecht attack. On the Anderlecht side, they tried to pressure and tried to make the Panathinaikos defense make the mistake that would lead to an early goal, something that never happened. De Beck was the main man for the home team, who created for Didane, who would play from the right or left which caused Vokolos many problems. Emmanuel Olisadebe did not really make an impact in the beginning because he rarely got any good balls. Lymberopoulos was also not making much noise on the pitch due to the fact that the Greek midfield was sending long balls towards him and he could not make anything out of them. In the 43’ minute Vokolos received his second yellow card and was sent off and that forced Markarian to put Goumas back on defense.

The second half started with Anderlecht making some serious chances because they had the numerical advantage and they just pressured relentlessly. You can sense the tightness the Panathinaikos defense had since they could do nothing to stop Anderlecht. Their system changed to a 4-4-1 because they were a man down with Lymberopoulos playing in the midfield. Markarian saw the midfield was having a problem and he decided to liven things up by adding Konstantinidis who played next to Basinas. The Anderlecht pressure finally paid off in the 70’ minute when Jestrovic scored a goal off of a free kick. That lifted the Anderlecht spirits and the second goal came 12 minutes later in the 82’ minute with Jestrovic scoring his second goal of the game. The Panathinaikos players did not only have to face the Anderlecht pressure but they also had to battle the many cards they received. Konstantinidis followed Vokolos to the locker room with a direct red card of his own that left his team with nine players with minutes to play. Panathinaikos weathered the storm and the final whistle blew with the score stuck at 2-0 and they celebrated their way to the quarterfinals of the UEFA Cup in dramatic fashion.

Panathinaikos: Nikopolidis, Seitaridis, Fyssas, Kyrgiakos, Vokolos, Goumas, Basinas, Karagounis (89’ Saric), Michaelsen (60’ Konstantinidis), Lymperopoulos, Olisadebe (77’ Konstantinou).