Tarik Elyounoussi

Beşiktaş will take on Lyon of France in the Europa League quarterfinals after knocking out Greek team Olympiacos on March 16.

The draw on March 17 pitted the defending Turkish league champion against the French league runner-up, with the first leg scheduled to be played on April 13 in Lyon. 

In a weekend of an unexpectedly high fan turnout at most Super League stadiums, Olympiakos put three past struggling Iraklis to stay 13 points ahead of PAOK and Panionios, who also won at home, while Panathinaikos was unable to win at PAS Giannina and dropped to fifth.

Three first-half goals gave a clearly superior Olympiakos a 3-0 win over archrival Panathinaikos in the Greek derby on Sunday to make the Reds a hot favorite for one more Super League title, as they have now opened a seven-point gap over the Greens. AEK and PAOK also had adverse results this weekend.

Olympiakos went joint top of its Europa League group after thrashing visiting Astana 4-1 on Thursday, while Panathinaikos wasted a two-goal lead at Standard Liege to draw 2-2 and PAOK lost 2-0 at Qarabag.

Two goals by Seba and one each from Diego Figueiras and Tarik Elyounoussi gave the Reds an easy win over the Kazakh team that had pulled one back via Junior Kabananga.

The new Super League season kicked off this weekend without any surprises, with a number of spectacular goals and with the four title contenders showing their caliber.

Olympiakos, PAOK, Panathinaikos and AEK all won, with varying degrees of ease, scoring 15 goals between them and accounting for 60 percent of the goals of the entire weekend that involved 14 teams.