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Athens4 to the rescue. http://tv-greek-live.blogspot.com/2014/08/e-channel-live-epsilon-tv.html It works now at least.

? that’s the beauty of football as they say Wait till League of Nations when we see what Skibbe does

Savvidis family taking selfies at St. Jacobs Park

What a fantastic result!

They need 4 to knock us out from here........

For proplr in the US. Bleacher Report Live has the game for free: https://live.bleacherreport.com/soccer/soccer-tournaments/events/paok-fc-fc-basel/45495

Quite simply put, the usual suspects in midfield have not performed consistently (neither for club nor country). Samaris has his occasional inspired moments mixed in with plenty of listless, tepid play. Same story for Taxi. As for Tziolis, for crying out loud the guy was past it in 2010! how long are we gonna keep trotting him out? And yes I get that these are different players with different skillsets but fact remains we've tried to pigeon-hole each of them as one of the "2" without consistent success. I'm not saying they don't deserve call-ups (except Tziolis who should simply retire), just that they don't deserve to walk into the 11. And I disagree with Rockafeller's assertion that there's no one better; if we're gonna stick with the 4-2-3-1 then it would behoove us to try others and give them the chance to either sink or swim before going back to the above options. Case in point: guys like Galanopoulos or Kourbelis have not shown themselves to be clearly inferior to the above three and thus should be given a trial next to Zeca. Now if we're willing to be experimental and move away from the 4-2-3-1, then maybe a different look with a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 is in the cards? ------------------------------------------------------------Donis------------------------------------------Mitroglou-------------------------------------- Stafylidis---------------------------------------------Mantalos-------------------------------------Zeca-----------------------Christodoulopoulos Lykogiannis---------------------------------------------Manolas-------------------------------Sokratis---------------------------------------Retsos ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Karnezis----------------------------------------------------------------------

Given the choices we have, for me, my pick for the box to box player it would be Mantalos. He is tougher than he appears and has the smarts to force his way into a game. Having said that all this talk of systems and positions can be misleading. If we’re playing Belgium we’re playing 8 or 9 behind the ball and we need at least 3 in the middle most of the time. No box to box here, it’s more box to centre circle. The other thing is this this talk of replace this player with that player as if they are interchangeable. Fortounis, Pelkas, Mantalos are all different players. In and around the box Pelkas is dangerous. He’s good for a game where Greece will generally attack. Ask him to be a tradional number 10 and he can’t do it. It’s just not in him. Likewise a game where we’re generally defending I think Lazaros becomes much more useful. He loves the space and running at defenders. End of the day unless you have a super team like a Belgium you need players and a manager that can adapt because you can’t play the same against Iceland as against Belgium. I don’t know who the best are for each game/situation (because I don’t study the players full time) but some of Skibbes picks leave me scratching my head. At the very least select fit players that can run and hustle for 90 minutes (see Iceland in this WC) and you give yourself a fighting chance. When your team consists of unfit and lazy players what’s chance do you have ? Toro, Tziolis, Samaris, Taxi, Fourtounis (yes he needs to hustle a lot more), Mitro ... good lord it’s like we’re sending out pensioners. The only player I’ve seen in recent times that didn’t pull their fair share in terms of running but they can get away with it was Pirlo. But hey, he’s Pirlo, he can do what he wants ha ha.

never said Samaris doesn't belong in the NT since 2015. in fact he was my avatar up till early 2017. I'm saying Gala's performance last season compared to Samaris's last eason would warrant Gala starting over him. In a 23 man squad Samaris almost certainly should be in the squad.

Everyone is asking for X (X being Samaris, Tachtsidis, Tziolis) to get benched but noone is really proposing a solution. You can propose everyone you want. Petsos?Galanopoulos?Siopis? Stafylidis/Toro at DM? Noone is gonna have an impact. You re all delusional and until you realise our midfield is for now beyond terrible (adding the fact that Kourbelis-Galanopoulos-Siopis who were our only hopes for a decent midfield in the previous summers) are not movinganytime soon in a proper competitive league to get experience we will still be forced to play the Zeka-Samaris-Tziolis trio. We just gotta focus on our defence and offence working and set pieces has to be our key because in all honesty, if you have no transition from such a good defence to a very decent offence you re gonna lack communication between the lines. (talking about Fortounis not having to Play low in the midfield to pass the ball up front but being a receiver from a decent pass that will unlock Mitroglou/Donis/Whoever from defenders and help them score. Our current transition in counter attack, which has always been our strong spot, is passing from defence/DMs to Fortounis who is around the midfield and he will carry it to offense. But he has the talent to be the receiver from a pass a box-to-box gives him , which will force defenders on him and unmark strikers. That one player is missing right now. It was Karagounis at his late career stage, who then passed the ball to the wings(but we also had decent wingers then - actually they were bad wingers but good and smart footballers) so our counter attack has gone to the garbage whenever we face semi decent (talking about Hungary-Finland tier) opposition. That's why I bet half our goals in the last campaign were scored from set pieces Anyone you name is no box to box. They are all koftes. Pws na ot kanoume. Spammarete 10 atoma "kalytera apo ton Tzioli" poy einai oloi koftes re paidia. Poses fores na to pw na to katalavete. Vale 2 kalous koftes sti thesi tou Tzioli pali provlima tha exoume mprosta. Den ine thema paikti einai thema thesis. Kai stin sugkekrimeni thesi, creative mid ESTW ENA REGISTA den exoume soiko oute gia plaka. None of them can pass the ball in a way that makes the opponent defence break. Tachtsidis definition of Regista but he is lazy and declining year after year. Galanopoulos can be b2b, coz boy can pass and usually is seen up front in the opposition box when playing for Aek but he is mostly doint dirty defensive work. Mantalos as an 8 is a solution indeed but you can't expect an attacking mid to be prosilwmenos at his defensive duties. He ll let himself loose for a moment and maybe the whole defensive mechanism goes cuckoo. MATHETE BALITSA AGORIA MU.

If you don't consider the club he plays, would you argue with him being in the team? Tziolis on the other plays for a s%$#! club and is a s%$#! player. Ninis is a free agent and is definitely not a bad player. His career didn't turn out the way we wanted it to but the talent is still there. His passing and vision shits on Tziolis. He has better technique than Fortounis and can has great ball control and is clever. He can also play 1 touch like Fetfatzidis. But the only thing is he is not as fast as he use to be. I hope he plays in the superleague this season and shows form...

The draw for round 1 will be on August 13th at 12:00 EEST at the offices of EPO.