Razvan Marin, for anyone who has forgotten, is a Romanian central midfielder who has played for Cagliari and Empoli and has always had a knack for goals. Well, that Marin, the very same one, decided the Champions League match between AEK Athens and LASK Linz, which ended 1-0 to the Greek champions. He did it with a superb free-kick into the top corner – you can find it here, and it is well worth watching. The strange thing is that AEK’s last Champions League victory had come twenty years earlier, on 21 November 2006: 1-0 against Ancelotti’s Milan. And Serie A had a role to play again this time, beyond Marin, in what is a major return to European football’s elite.
In fact, AEK have been signing players who have slipped a little out of the orbit of Europe’s major leagues for several years now, giving them minutes and a chance to revive their careers, or at least to try, in a less competitive but fiercely intense environment like the Greek league. Anthony Martial and Roberto Pereyra were among them, although both have left Athens in recent months, along with quite a few familiar faces from Serie A. In this season’s squad, coached by Serbian Marko Nikolic, there are six players who have spent at least one season in Italy’s top flight: goalkeepers Alberto Brignoli and Thomas Strakosha, who was injured a few days ago, defender Charalampos Lykogiannis, the aforementioned Marin and former Inter player João Mário. Then there is Luka Jovic up front, who after the ups and downs of his time at Real Madrid and Milan seems to have found his place in Greece: last season he scored 17 goals in 29 appearances, and he already has two in the first three games of the 2026/27 Super League.
The squad also includes Lovro Majer, the Croatian midfielder formerly of Wolfsburg and Rennes, Christos Alexiou – a Greek talent on loan from Inter Under-23 – and Domagoj Vida, who has played for Dynamo Kyiv and Besiktas. This transfer policy has already paid off: AEK won the league last season, finishing two points ahead of Olympiakos, and reached the Champions League League Phase after beating Levski in the play-off round. “I waited 18 whole years to experience this moment,” Alberto Brignoli said after his Champions League debut against LASK. “I have worked towards this goal since I was a kid and I am proud.” There is an even stranger detail: AEK also had an Italian goalkeeper when they beat Milan. His name was Stefano Sorrentino. “I found that out today,” Brignoli explained. “They showed me a photo on social media. It is really crazy.” There was no better way to put it.