The warning Mendilibar actually means
"No easy game, and in Tripoli even less so." José Luis Mendilibar said it before Sunday's match against Asteras AKTOR (3). For once the cliché is not a cliché. Olympiacos go into matchday 2 with 2/2 in reach, three points already banked from the 1–0 win over Atromitos on August 22. That is the position: sixth, one game played, goal difference +1. A win in Tripoli and the season is exactly where it should be.
But Mendilibar's line sits inside a bigger week. The coach named the players himself: El Kaabi, Carmo, Rodinei, Pedersen, González. This is not rotation talk, it is a message that the squad he trusts is the squad he has, not the squad the market keeps promising him.
The transfer window is making its own argument
The story of Olympiacos this week is not on the pitch, it is in the rejection pile. Dodô refused the move and wants to stay at Fiorentina (2). Gustavo Puerta, the midfielder Marinakis chased, chose Benfica despite Olympiacos paying his €16m clause. The owner said it plainly: "He wants to go to Benfica. What more can be done?" (7). No hiding, no spin. Marinakis is saying out loud what Olympiacos fans have felt for weeks.
Get the next Olympiacos brief by email
This article went out to subscribers as a brief. Get the next one straight to your inbox, free.
Free · No spam · Unsubscribe anytime
And still the club keeps swinging. A concrete bid is in for Genoa midfielder Morten Frendrup, though a gap with the Italians remains (8). Nicolás Domínguez at Nottingham Forest is also on the list (9). That is the pattern of this window: ambition with a long tail of noes behind it. The question is not whether Olympiacos want midfielders, it is whether any of them want Olympiacos back.
One signing who did work out is watching from a distance. Kostas Tzolakis, the former Olympiacos keeper, kept a clean sheet as Coventry 0–1 Hull made it 2/2 in the Premier League, and he was named Man of the Match (4). The ex player performing elsewhere while the current squad waits for the market to deliver is the week in one image.
What to watch
Tripoli on Sunday is the immediate test, and if Mendilibar gets 2/2, the league table starts to look the way champions expect. Then the window closes. Frendrup and Domínguez are the names to track, and every hour between now and the deadline tells you how serious this rebuild actually is. The scouting now extends to Europe: Yagielonia, Olympiacos's first Europa League opponent, just won 5–2 away at Raków (1). That fixture is coming, and it will ask questions the Super League cannot.
