AEK Athens took a comfortable 4-0 victory over Iraklis 1908 at OPAP Arena on 22 August 2026, winning the opening fixture of the Super League 1 regular season. The hosts moved to five places above their opponents in the table, sitting on four points after two games compared to Iraklis 1908's solitary point from ten.
And here's the thing about the first half — AEK found their rhythm early. B. Varga opened the scoring in the eleventh minute, and L. Jovic doubled the advantage before the interval with a nineteenth-minute strike. Iraklis 1908's goalkeeper was called into action just once in that period, a sign of how tightly AEK controlled the tempo.
The second half began with a triple substitution for the visitors at the forty-sixth minute — R. Nizet, K. Kaiboue and K. Kushta all came on together. To be fair, Iraklis 1908 needed fresh legs, but the change did little to alter the pattern. L. Jovic added his second goal in the forty-ninth minute, and a Pina effort later cancelled by VAR at fifty-four only added to the frustration.
A yellow card for M. Vitalis in the fifty-eighth minute marked the first disciplinary action, while Zini's seventy-fifth-minute goal sealed the result. AEK turned to their bench heavily after that — B. Varga and R. Marin both came off in the seventy-second minute, with O. Zubkov and L. Jovic replaced at sixty-three. The visitors continued to throw bodies forward, bringing on M. Gacinovic and Pina in the closing stages.
The statistics tell their own story, though the match was decided in those moments rather than the numbers. AEK registered eleven shots on target from twenty attempts, with three big chances created and a 58 per cent share of possession. Iraklis 1908 managed only one shot on target from three attempts, with zero big chances and a goalkeeper who made seven saves.
The result leaves AEK in fifth place with a clean record — one win, one draw, no defeats — while Iraklis 1908 drop further down to tenth, carrying just one point from two outings. The hosts have now gone four matches without a loss in this span, but they are running out of games to build momentum. The old head of this squad knows that three or four moments like these define a season more than any table position.