David Moyes is looking forward to the challenge awaiting his West Ham United side on Thursday evening.
The Irons touched down in Athens on Wednesday ahead of a third Group A match of the 2023/24 UEFA Europa League campaign, with Moyes' men taking on Greek Super League side Olympiacos.
With wins already secured at home to Serbian outfit FK TSC and away to Bundesliga team SC Freiburg, the Hammers know another three points would stand them in good stead to progress through the group stages and into the knock-out rounds of the European competition.
Having reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa League in 2021/22, followed by the incredible UEFA Europa Conference League success in 2022/23, Moyes and his team are hoping to keep their amazing run on the European stage going.
With a new record of consecutive games unbeaten in Europe for an English team set by West Ham last time out, Moyes know his side will need to be at their best to get past an Olympiacos side that are unbeaten in the Greek top division this season.
Before he began talking about Thursday's game, however, Moyes paid tribute to his former Everton Chairman Bill Kenwright, who passed away on Monday, aged 78
Bill Kenwright was a wonderful man
It’s incredibly sad news about Bill Kenwright. He was a wonderful man.
He gave me a big opportunity in my career. He took me when I was a young manager in a lower league and gave me a job in the Premier League. He was brilliantly supportive. I couldn’t have had a better Chairman as a young coach.
When I look at modern football nowadays and how difficult it is for many young managers to make their way, Bill Kenwright was great to work with. We had great times over eleven years with him and we had some successful moments.
He’ll be sadly missed and his whole family know how I feel. I’m really disappointed that Bill has left us.
We want passion, but we also want also good behaviour
They’ve got great support here, fantastic enthusiasm, and it’s great to come to a football city where football really matters. That’s what you want. You want the passion and the atmosphere, but you also want good behaviour from our supporters and Olympiacos supporters.
It’s a game and we know it’s really passionate but it’s it important every works well together and we end up having a good night.
All we want is a good football game. It’s great that we have passionate supporters, but to be a passionate supporter you also have to be a good supporter as well, and that includes our supporters as well.
You’re not helping your club, so you have to be passionate and enthusiastic and support your team well, but you’re not doing your club any favours if you’re getting stadium bans or if your team is getting thrown out of Europe, so you want your fans to be well-behaved.
My biggest disappointment, then one of my best results
It was a really big night when I managed Manchester United against Olympiacos here in the UEFA Champions League round of 16 first leg in 2014. It was probably one of my most disappointing nights [because we lost 2-0], but beating them 3-0 at Old Trafford was one of my best results.
Everybody knows coming to Athens to play any of the teams here can be tough games and Olympiacos is a really tough game. They’re a serial team in European football for many years, sometimes the Champions League and sometimes the Europa League, and the football club itself has had lots of experience of European football.
You just have to embrace it here and enjoy it and if you’re a football man you want big atmospheres.
We’ve been playing throughout Europe and we’ve found the atmospheres brilliant. They’re different from the Premier League, where we have really big support, but the atmospheres in Europe have been really big.
I do believe the culture of the city and the people are always the reason why you get big atmospheres, but we have got to remember football is just a game. We’re seeing so many things throughout the world, so the message is we are all here to enjoy your football.
Support your team with passion because the players thrive on it as well. We want to see supporters enjoying it, and it’s great we are seeing full stadiums and that we are getting great atmospheres. It’s part of the game and as a young boy, it’s why you want to play at the top level, to play in these games.
European football is a bit of a lucky charm for me!
We have actually had two very good years in Europe, but for West Ham we’ve not had it regular.
We’re still not like Olympiacos, serially in Europe every season, but the last two years we have done really well, getting to a semi-final of the Europa League and then a final of the Conference League last year, so I hope European football is a bit of a lucky charm for me and we can keep it going.
We’ve had a good run and I want to do it again. We’ve started this group really well. Thursday night is a really tough game, but we’ve had a great start to the group.
We've done our homework on Olympiacos
We have spoken with Dinos Mavropanos about Olympiacos and we know [their winger] Daniel Podence very well from his time at Wolves. He did very well for Wolves in his time there, I thought.
We’ve done as much work as we can. We understand what we can. We have two games now, the first here in Athens and the second in two weeks at London Stadium, so we’ll get to know each other quite well over these two games!
