Panathinaikos will play Spanish champion Barcelona, Danish side FC Copenhagen and Rubin Kazan of Russua in soccer's Champions League following yesterday's draw.

The Greek champions will begin their campaign on September 14 or 15.

Panathinaikos, ranked 39, were the weakest team in Pot Two and would have been happy to avoid some of the other second-seeded teams like Real Madrid, Roma, Benfica and Marseille.

Instead, the Greens will face FC Copenhagen, who won the Danish Superliga last season and have former PAO striker Dame N'Doye in their ranks, and Russian champions Rubin Kazan who have a multinational squad that includes Nigerian forward Obafemi Martins.

Clearly though, the games against Barcelona will be the ones to capture the imagination. The Greens have played the Spanish giants twice before in the Champions League, in the 2001/2 season and in 2005/6.

In the most recent encounters, PAO held Barcelona to a 0-0 draw in Athens but succumbed to a 5-0 defeat in Catalonia.

However, it is the games in April 2002 that Greens fans will remember most, when their side, then coached by Uruguayan Sergio Markarian, came close to knocking Barca out in the quarter-finals.

Having won their initial group, which included Arsenal, the Greens came second behind Real Madrid in the next group stage, to set up a tie with Barcelona.

An Angelos Basinas penalty in the closing stages gave the Greens a 1-0 win in Athens on April 3. Six days later, the Greeks were in dreamland as Michalis Konstantinou gave them an early lead at the Camp Nou but two goals from Luis Enrique and one from Javier Saviola meant that the Spaniards won the game 3-1 and went through to the semis, where they lost to Real.

The full draw:

Group A: Inter Milan, Werder Bremen, Tottenham, FC Twente

Group B: Lyon, Benfica, Schalke, Hapoel Tel Aviv

Group C: Manchester Utd, Valencia, Rangers, Bursaspor

Group D: FC Barcelona, Panathinaikos, FC Copenhagen, Rubin Kazan

Group E: Bayern Munich, AS Roma, FC Basel, CFR Cluj

Group F: Chelsea, Marseille, Spartak Moscow, MSK Zilina

Group G: AC Milan, Real Madrid, Ajax, Auxerre

Group H: Arsenal, Shakhtar Donetsk, SC Braga, FK Partisan

The stage was set, the script had been written, and the tickets at Thessaloniki's theatre of soccer the Toumba were sold out. Sadly for PAOK, however, the Double-headed Eagles played a starring role in their own version of a classic Greek tragedy as Ajax denied them entry to the Champions League.

There were plenty of heroes and villains to Wednesday's enthralling piece, which finally ended 3-3 on the night, giving Ajax the victory on the away goals rule. The depressing truth for PAOK though, is that most of the heroes were wearing blue shirts while the villains were found among their own ranks as Pavlos Dermitzakis' team wasted the best chance they have had since 2005 of reaching Europe's top table for the first time.

Villains? Vladan Ivic, the goal hero of the first leg whose strike had prompted so much optimism, did score in injury time to level the match but the Serbian midfielder was left cursing his luck and thinking of what might have been had he not blasted a 77th-minute penalty straight at Ajax keeper Maarten Stekelenburg. If there was one clear hero candidate then it was Holland's World Cup goalkeeper. Apart from saving Ivic's spot-kick, the imposing shot-stopper then superbly denied Dimitris Salpigidis when the diminutive striker was clean through on goal. Missing a chance with only the keeper to beat with so much at stake? That also put ‘Salpi' in the villain category.

But that PAOK needed such miracles to keep their hopes alive so late in the game was almost criminal considering they had taken a 16th-minute lead through Vierinha and looked relatively comfortable going in at half-time.

The reason the Black and Whites were chasing the game was down to a farcical 10-minute opening to the second half where it seemed that PAOK's entire backline decided to take it upon themselves to show everyone how not to defend.

Despite the ‘presence' of two defenders on their backs, Ajax striker Luis Suarez and Siem de Jong were both given ample room to put the Dutch side 2-1 ahead before Rasmus Lindgren's free-kick easily broke through the PAOK defensive wall to add the third. It was a shell-shock which the hosts could not quite recover from.

‘Suicide', a ‘katastrophic' opening to the second half and ‘a tragic 10 minutes' were just some of the phrases used among the plethora of Greek sports sites as they picked through the bones of an enthralling evening which once again saw Holland conquer Greece.

Indeed, it is not the first time a Greek side has suffered heartbreak at the hands of Dutch opposition. Back in 1996, Panathinaikos - just as PAOK had done - seemed to have completed the hard work in their Champions League semi-final first leg clash when they beat Ajax 1-0 in Amsterdam. However, the Greens suffered a crushing 3-0 defeat in the second leg and were dumped out.

A case of a Dutch curse repeating itself? There could be something in it but the important thing for Dermitzakis and his team now is to put the blinkers on and look forward. After all, the Black and Whites do still have the Europa League to play for as well as another Greek title tilt to build.

To say they must learn from their mistakes would be stating the blinding obvious but this can not be highlighted enough. The same kinds of errors committed on Wednesday accounted for they late stumble in the title race last season. Concentration at the back was something former coach and current Greece boss Fernando Santos championed. It is a must if they are to progress.

Graham Wood