A Moroccan Striker Dominates the European Conference League

Moroccan international striker Ayoub El Kaabi maintained his brilliant performance, leading his Greek team, Olympiacos, to the final of the European Conference League after securing another victory over their English guest, Aston Villa, with a score of 2-0.

El Kaabi scored both goals for his team at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium in Athens in the second leg of the semi-final, adding to his hat-trick in the first leg, which Olympiacos won 4-2 in Birmingham last week.

El Kaabi’s tally now stands at 10 goals in 8 matches, making him the top scorer with a two-goal lead over his closest rivals. Olympiacos will face Italian club Fiorentina in the final in Athens on May 29. Fiorentina, the runner-up of the last edition, secured their spot by drawing 1-1 with Belgian club Brugge in the second leg, having won 3-2 in the first leg in Florence.

The final match will take place at AEK Athens’ Hagia Sophia Stadium. This will be Olympiacos’ first appearance in a final match for one of the continental competitions, after their best result was reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League in 1999 and the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1993.

In the midst of this distinguished achievement, El Kaabi grabbed the spotlight by scoring five of the six goals for Olympiacos against one of the leading English teams. He became the first Arab player to score this number of goals in a single elimination round in European competitions, surpassing many Arab stars, including Egyptian Mohamed Salah, the English star of Liverpool. However, he was equal to Salah in the overall total of goals (10 goals) in one season in a European competition. Salah had previously achieved this feat in the 2017-2018 season in the UEFA Champions League.

Olympiacos’ Spanish coach, Jose Luis Mendilibar, praised the performance of his players, especially El Kaabi, saying, “I cannot describe my feeling now. I think we will take some time to process what we have done and what we have reached now.”

He added, “I am very pleased with the players’ performance. They enjoyed themselves and also entertained the fans.”

Mendilibar spoke about the final match of the competition against Fiorentina, saying, “Let’s wait and see. I followed them a little, and I watched them in the return match against Brugge the previous day after we finished our training.” He clarified, “They played the entire second half very well. They deserved a place in the final.”

Mendilibar stressed at the end of his speech, “It will be a strong confrontation against an Italian team that has competence and quality, and we still have 20 days to study them and get to know them more precisely again.”