Simon Stone has detailed what happened in an incident that took place before the West Ham game against Olympiacos on Thursday (9 November)
Writing on the BBC Sport website on Thursday (08:03pm), the journalist said the teams came out for the handshakes, with the Hammers ending up on the right ahead of the Europa League clash at the London Stadium.
He added that they swapped around for the coin toss as Lukasz Fabianski found himself on the left before the two sides then switched ends again before kick-off in what he described as a “weird” situation.
The Irons would then go on to secure a 1-0 victory courtesy of a second-half goal from Lucas Paqueta that puts them in with an excellent chance of making it through the group stage.
Crowd-killer
It’s likely that Olympiacos probably won the toss and chose to switch ends to stop West Ham from gaining any momentum playing towards their home fans in the second half
The Hammers have turned up on a number of occasions when they have been playing towards the Bobby Moore Stand, so it was a smart move from the Greek side.
It just sometimes changes the atmosphere and dampens the crowd a little bit to change ends and take the hosts out of their comfort zone.
That did appear to be the case in the first half as, despite the Irons largely dominating proceedings, they were a little bit flat in spells.
The crowd would then normally be spurring them on at the start of the second half, but it took until Paqueta’s opener before the crowd really got going at the London Stadium.
