georgelaz

I'm a fan of Siovas as a squad player for the NT. Left footed, can play CDM too. If he's good enough for Oly in round of 16 cl, I think he's good enough to be at least squad. to me, even if kpaps only can start one game, he's worth that slot. he's a game changer when he's on the field.

not my favourite but pretty realistic. definitely creative which I give you props for I'd like to see Mitroglou & Karelis on at the same time cause they provide different things up on the pitch. I only think we should put in 3 cb's if we have sokratis/manolas/kyriakos in there. tzvellas is a good squad player but I don't like the idea of starting him as apposed to starting Mantalos or Karelis. I'd rather keep the squad ethnic greek unless it's a no brainer. Zeca isn't significantly better/equal/worse to Maniatis/Tachtsidis/Petsos to warrant a call up now. I'd rate him our fourth CM behind Samaris, Tachtsidis, Maniatis. I'm also sure at least one of Ninis / Fetfa / Mantalos / Pelkas will be in good form this year.

if pao gets both lazaros and kone, very high probability pao could win the league.

I'm not a football technition so I don't know if it's practical, but I think we should only apply 3 cb's if we got our main dudes in the mix. not sure how easy it is too have different formations in the mix or not?

hard to compare Samars to Mitroglou. Mr. Mykonos is a pure striker ala Berbatov. Whereas Samaras is kinda a hybrid striker / winger. As a striker i'd rate Mitroglou. For the NT though Samaras has been way more clinical. As much as I love Mitroglou. Hopefully with Fortounis he can light up so goals for us world cup.

that one is just as good just Maniatis for Petsos. Not convinced with Petsos yet. If he has a good season with Bremen, then i'm down. anytime kpaps is 100% we have to revert to 3 cb's though. It's too good to not capitalize on that. he's a strange case. he looks mesomorphic big boned aka not an injury prone looking dude.

Samaras is the most notorious Greek footballer on this forum at least. 78 pages of forum discussion! second place isn't even close! Possibly the most controversial greek footballer as well. Debates; Abortion, Gun Laws, Healthcare, Military, Education, and Samaras. lol XD :P

yo. i'm telling you, we'd slay that lineup. we were up 2-0 with just fortounis and karelis against iceland on field they have good chemistry. Mitroglou is just pure presence up there even if he isn't doing anything people fear him so he'll always have a man on him or two to free up space. Holebas can run like he's 19 so on the wing he's nice. Torosidis can stay back or just slot in front and sokratis can patch up the space. with that lineup I think we can beat bosnia pretty convingly at a 2-0. Samaris and Maniatis will frustrate the F*** out of pjanic. the only teams that would be able to score with that defense would be belgium. or if the other teams score a fluke goal. there's no way we won't score with holebas, torosidis, mitroglou, karelis and fortounis which are all good offensive outlets have we ever got to field this lineup? doesn't seem like it not even that close there's always ben 2-3 players from that lineup that didn't start at the least. notable subs would be tachtsidis, kone, petsos i'd also keep eye on form for fetfa, ninis, staf

Samaras gave everything to the NT. He's a very introverted guy so is easily misunderstood (Messi is the same way). He scores big goals. Vs. Germany, Croatia, Ivory Coast, Barcelona. And assists big goals too. One of the top Greek players for sure. Up there with Sokratis, Karagounis, Zagorakis.

he had one of the best careers for greek players, let's be real. I want him to go to MLS so I can see him here and play him in fifa. he should play in Toronto, Chicago, MTL, New York where all the Greeks are at. I was watching MLS today, it's getting better every year. It has a similar style to EPL.

from ranieri, markarian, skibbe. skibbe seems the best. santos is better than all though. Would be really nice to make a world cup quarter final or semi, heck, win to g*****eno

Belgium is much better than us. We'll have to play extremely well to get an edge over them. As a favourite for the euro they did dissapoint, but they're still one of the best world sides and they were without two of their best defensive players = Dembele & Kompany, two players that are arguably better than any Greek player. It's not impossible that we can scrape a 1-0 or 0-0 if we play well and they play poor though. We'll see what the soccer gods say.

Kpaps is his only 4 apperances in 2015 half of them the opponents did not score 0-0. The other two matches they only scored a goal. He's a huge lift to the team and should be started whenever available. http://www.uefa.com/teamsandplayers/players/player=1901610/profile/index.html One of our main issues is that our attack doesn't have pace. Mitroglou, Samaris, Tachtsidis are our top tier options and are quite slow. Fortounis is decently speedy though. Fetfa through us under the bridge with his Saudi move, he should've been starting whenever available as well. He adds another dimension to our attack. Imagine Holebas LW & Fetfatzidis RW, Mitroglou up top. We'd make some great plays for sure. P.S. everyone here vote for Greek league to be in the next fifa. We're only at 30k votes right now! (Turkish second division is at 550 000) I know they outnumber us but still the Israeli division is on top and they have even less numbers than us! http://www.fifplay.com/fifa17-leagues-vote/

this team has so many questions marks. part of me thinks we can even make it to a world cup quarter final. the other part of me is fearful that we might even flop this qualifying. I haven't seen any convincing changes made to the team since our botched euro campaign.

lol I remember a poster in the old greeksoccer forums stating Katsouranis is 'the Greek Pirlo'. It was kinda jokes but he is in a way. Or the Greek Gerrard. If England started Gerrard I think they would have faired better. Despite him playing in MLS

The Zikos exclusion is the most confusing for sure. In retrospect our 2004 team was a dream team. Still having a great squad without Zikos, Stoltidis, Georgiadis, and an injured Tsiartsas in the final. "Katsouranis is one of the best players I ever trained in my professional career" - Fernando Santos (football coach) about Katsouranis.[34] Renato Sanchez I think gets the 'exception to the rule pass'. He started over Samaris in the champions league knock out rounds to Bayern at 18. That speaks volumes right there.

his contract is until 2017 at Roma. I think he gets a lot of unnecessary flak on this forum. Yes his skills aren't as good as say when he was 25 but he's still the best we got at that position. Being a squad player at Roma ain't too shabby.

exactly. Santos has no fear in playing a 32 year old winger in Queresma & a 38 CB in Carvalho. He's using the same strategy is he did with Greece. Putting experience at a premium. This + he has the luxury of the best players in the world. Santos is the perfect international manager. He's contrarian. Stoic. And values winning in the big picture. I think Portugal MIGHT get blown out in the final like 2-0 but I still stand by that.

there's no luck here. Croatia beat Spain the defending champs, which Portugal beat. Wales beat Belgium a heavy favour to win the whole thing. Portugal basically beat Belgium and Spain by beating the people who beat them in a way. It depends on your perspective, but their success is not mostly because of luck. It's because Santos is one of the best international managers, RONALDO, a golden generation, and chemistry.

international games is a man's game not a boy game. I said I had a good feelings about Portugal this tourny because their players are in that 27-32 sweet spot range for international success. England played 19 years olds (Ali) and early 20s (Kane, Dier). And the choked. The pressure that every game counts take an experienced player and the portugese have been the same team for while now so their chemistry is uncanny. much like portugal, we should stick to our tried and true unless someone is a no-brainer eg) the 19 year old ronaldo in euro 2004. if santos was still our coach we'd still have Katsouranis, Maniatis, Gekas, Samaras starting and playing most minutes. Along with Holebas, Torosidis, Sokratis, Karnezis, Mitroglou, Samaris. Fortounis would have been the new addition. People would bitch and complain that we're playing old-timers but we would make it to euro 2016 and possibly get to a quarter or semi final. that's the thing, is was too many key changes. we had a winning formula and if you want to improve a winning formula you gotta be careful not to F*** up the success you already have! The only switch that should've been made was Kone/Fortounis for Karagounis in retrospect. Katsouranis and Gekas were fully intending on making euro 2016 their retirement tourny but Ranieri came and tried to revolutionize something that was already working and left our team in shambles.

Holevas as a lw is a waste to me. He has good strength to defend and he was the pace to get into LW position when he sees fit. He doesn't need to be lodged up there. When his pace begins to decline tho, might be a good idea to move him from LB to LW cause his offensive abilities are savage.

what do you guys think of klonaridis? He's got pace in spades, and a good finisher too. Loves playing on the wings too. I saw 4-5 games of his which he performed well. Can't judge his whole season performance though. him and gianniotas/fetfatzidis can be our wingers in time if they get their s%$#! together. whatever happened to Kaltas? He fizzled at PAO but was killing it at his previous club. It seems we have great wingers/attacking mids at a young level that never bloom as much as our defensive players. I blame Europe personally for this. They view the Greek DNA as defensive so they only invest in our defense for the most part. Whereas they look to South American DNA for attack eg) Brazil, Argentina.

good post just nitpicking. you realize that only Kone(28) all the other players are 25 and under? lol

yup I agree with that lineup pretty much. just as soon as kpaps becomes available I'd start him over petsos.

Fortounis often plays on the left wing for olympiakos. He's almost double footed and loves to cut in. I think him and Mantalos should shift from CAM to Wingers as the game sees fit.