georgelaz

he's never gotten a proper 90. probably if you combine all those appearances it's like 60 minutes total. maybe less. they put him on like last 5 minutes of the game if I recall correctly.

I've always been an advocate of Mitroglou and Fortounis being our best in their respective positions even when they're out of form. I'm referring to Koulouris should've been the striker not Donis vs. Bosnia since Mitro was out.

koulouris 23 goals in 31 appearances... how many tap ins can he really have at atromitos. also scored against oly last weekend cisse put up those kind of numbers and got called up for france. surely koulouris should get a 90 with this kind of form.

I wouldn't describe Estonia as a minnow to be nitpicky. they're more on par with Cyprus. They have a few very quality players like Klavan who was an important player for Liverpool. Minnows to me are countries that even people who know geography don't know exist like Gilbratar, Faroe Islands, Leichenstein etc.

tachtsidis is a good long passer through balls. tzavellas actually in his prime might've been our best FK taker post euro. Lazaros is good at them with power and Fortounis has more precision but less power. ninis's golden zone was so long ago that I can barely remember his free kicks.

most similar player to Samaras I think of now is Arnautovic (just Samaras was more cool headed) LM/ST combo very tall 6'4 but plays like a smaller flair player

I got into NT during euro 2004. the actual tourny. I somehow just started watching the group stages. very unsual. So I never got to see him in action while he was going at it in his prime. It does seem like he was a class above but we still have some creative players is all I'm saying.

how do you define creative option... we've always had creative options. obviously tsiartas was very high level but I'd argue Fortounis, Samaras, Karagounis, Mantalos, Fetfatzidis, Ninis, Galanopoulos just to name a few all have some degree of flair to their game.

they're 3 best players are very good = dzeko, pjanic, visca but our 3 best players are equally as good = manolas, sokratis, mitroglou/fortounis and then the rest of our squad is above average whereas the rest of their squad is pretty bad and a lot of players who struggle to even start for a top 4 greek superleague side (ie cimerot was squad player in greece but a starter for bosnia) the reason why bosnia is always edged is human laziness because it's easier to see attacking stats over defensive. whenever people think of the best players they think ronaldo, messi etc. not ramos or van dijk their defense is much weaker compared to ours though so even though dzeko is better then mitroglou their like of talent on that level makes them easy to score against. eg) how cyprus came back from 2-0 down to win. still a long road to go but I think bosnia basically shot themselves in the foot with this game. when greece builds momentum, belief we're super hard to beat. now we have them in greece at home and we'll likely have manolas, torosidis back. if we're playing well too the stadium might be packed like vs. romania

durmisaj over koulouris? koulouris has to be way better he just hasn't been given minutes for NT that's another misleading thing about NT stats. most players first 20 apperances are only like 5-10 minutes lol

it seems that he was fatigued by 70th and that's when he started giving balls away. mental fatigue is a thing too and being one of the only creative outlets he had to think for 10 people.

probably a bad idea but I wonder if Zeca as a RB would be good. He's a decent crosser,defender and engine. Kourbelis and Samaris when in form are good cm's too. (at least until toro/retsos are back) I don't think bakakis is that bad though, I think he just had a bad game. He' shares a lot of the qualities that Zeca has. could be something like this mitroglou donis fortounis masouras kourbelis samaris koutris sokratis manolas zeca odyesseas

good point. has a strange starting 11 ever been effective? only one I can think of that got us a draw was vs. turkey 0-0 where samaris and mitroglou were our only attacking players (samaris is not even a pure attacker). we played really bad but succeeded in shutting them down.

Ange summoned the spirit of the holy trinity as half time, sigoura.

3rd toughest match for us and we looked like we should've won (2 italy matches being the hardest imo) so looks like we have a really good shot to get 2nd possibly 1st

you think it was done purposely or they just couldn't hear him cause he wasn't loud enough because the stadium was super loud

bad communication from vlacho. he wanted a 3 man wall and only zeca was there. he's our best keeper for sure but he still needs to build chem with everyone (zeca and him were teamates at pao so that's why he understood i'd imagine)

Bosnia destroyed us first 20 minutes I thought we were gunna lose 5-0 with that let up. Weird thing we often are having brain farts and slow to get into the game but then we just started dominating. with manolas back and a few key others it will be all Greece in Hellas I believe but can't get too cocky either but I'm optimistic what can I say

yeah so I found an article about it. Vranjes is more pro Serbia/Russia as he's orthodox according to this article which has friction from bosniak fans http://www.sarajevotimes.com/ognjen-vranjes-disqualified-from-bih-football-team/

eh to be fair those guys were very nice and civil. they're probably the more enlightened ones to find this forum. I'd rather it just be greek soccer fans though so we can be a bit more cheeky. PS what happened to Vranjes? some guy on youtube said he was kicked out of the Bosnian team for sticking up for AEK fans? he's a great cb

vre ton angelo me tsabouka

na se kala agorina mou

they're hot heads and our players caught on to this and were trying to be extra civil to calm them down.

I'm craving some post match interviews with players/coaches and analysis but hard to come by from smaller nations playing each other. We had the fighting spirit vs. Belgium and Bosnia last series too. was only the euro 2016 qualifier that was really that bad. going out to world cup finalists without one of our best defenders manolas (getting short end of stick on uefa on that call)

Highlights in Greek commentary from your boy Loupnikis. Zito Ellas!