Vasilis Torosidis

A rather experimental Greece team lost 2-1 to Turkey on Thursday at a friendly game in Antalya, showing manager Angelos Anastasiadis has plenty of work to do to gear the national team up for the Euro 2020 qualifiers against Italy and Armenia at home.

Olympiakos took another leap toward qualifying from its Europa League group through an emphatic win over Dudelange at home on Thursday, as PAOK suffered another reverse at the hands of Vidi, this time in Budapest.

The Reds defeated their visitors from Luxembourg with a 5-1 score, having led 4-0 from the first half.

Olympiakos scored its first victory at the group stage of the Europa League, beating Dudelange 2-0 in Luxembourg on Thursday, while PAOK lost precious ground going down 2-0 at home to Hungarian champion Vidi.

SOCCER: Reports say PAOK has agreed terms with Arsenal to buy the London club's 23-year-old striker Chuba Akpom for just over 1 million euros. The England Under-21 international may be in Thessaloniki as early as on Monday.

Croatia snatched a goalless draw in Greece on Sunday and grabbed the all-important ticket to the World Cup finals of 2018 with a 4-1 aggregate score, due to Greece's miserable performance in the first leg in Zagreb on Thursday.

The national team did its duty on Tuesday and defeated visiting Gibraltar 4-0 in Piraeus to finish second in its World Cup qualifying group and advance to the play-offs in November for a ticket to the finals in Russia next summer.

Belgium with its victory in Bosnia and Slovenia with a draw with Scotland, made Greece’s job tonight easier. Greece, on her side, won inside Cyprus and now what separates us from the participating in the group of eight teams that will try to get the last four European tickets for the World Cup in Russia, is Gibraltar.

SOCCER: Olympiakos announced on Wednesday the signing of Serb striker Uros Djordjevic - who scored against the Reds in the Champions League qualifiers a few weeks ago - and Panathinaikos confirmed the acquisition of Malian holding midfielder Yacouba Sylla, formerly of Rennes and Aston Villa.

Greece has made it 3 out of 3 in Group H of the world cup qualifiers, after defeating Estonia 2-0 in Talin, Monday night. In a scrappy match, where the home side performed better on the pitch, visiting Greece managed to grab the 3 points courtesy of a goal scored in each half by Torosidis (1’) and Stafylidis (61’).

Greece extended its perfect start to the World Cup qualifiers with a 2-0 win in Tallinn over host Estonia on Monday night. Both of its goals came from defenders.