Matt Maher on Olympiacos defeat

Transcript

00:00Good evening, or should I say actually good morning from Greece because it's just after

00:06one o'clock in the morning in Piraeus where there's a party underway because Olympiacos

00:14have reached the Europa Conference League final at Villa's expense. A 2-0 win on the

00:19night, 6-2 win on aggregate. Villa came here looking to climb a mountain and they never

00:26really got past base camp. Ayobe El-Karbi who scored a hat-trick in last week's first

00:31leg scoring after 10 minutes here tonight to effectively put the tie to bed. Villa didn't

00:37play badly at all in the first half, they played quite well but they just couldn't find

00:41the moment, they couldn't find the goal that would have got them back into the tie and

00:44as the game got on you could see the belief ebbing away from them and El-Karbi scored

00:50again with 10 minutes remaining to completely seal the deal. Olympiacos, just the second

00:57Greek team to ever reach a major European final. Panathinaikos did it in 1971, they've

01:02made a bit of history tonight. It was Villa who wanted to make history, they wanted to

01:06reach a European final for just the second time, first time since 1982. It was a really

01:13disappointing result obviously but tonight is not where this tie was lost, it was last

01:19week at Villa Park, 4-2 home defeat which they just never looked like recovering from.

01:24Emi Martinez was fit tonight but so many players out, it just feels like the injuries have

01:30eventually caught up with Unai Emery's team, they've had a fantastic season but there is

01:36a risk now that it could fizzle out if they're not careful. They still need one more win

01:41to qualify for next season's Champions League, they host Liverpool on Monday, another quick

01:45turn around but they'll need to get over this quite quickly. It does really feel like

01:50a big missed opportunity for Villa who were favourites coming into this competition, did

01:55so well to get past Lille, did so much to get past Lille in the previous round and they

02:00just didn't perform the way they needed to last week and whatever they did tonight just

02:05was never going to be good enough.